PRIMITIVE CIVILIZATIONS OR
OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF OWNERSHIP IN
ARCHAIC COMMUNITIES

PRIMITIVE CIVILIZATIONS

OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF OWNERSHIP
IN ARCHAIC COMMUNITIES

E. J. SIMCOX
AUTHOR OF " NATURAL LAW," ETC

VOLUME II

Hotioon
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO
NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO

Butler & Tanner
The Selwood Printing Works
Frome and London

CONTENTS

BOOK IV.
O WNERSHJP JN CHJNA.
CHAPTER I. The Land and its History .
II. The Ancient Monarchy ....
III. Political Ethics and Political Economy
IV. The Rural Economy of the Chow .
V. Industry and Trade in the Middle Antiquity of China
VI. Social and Domestic Relations in Medieval China
VII. Feudalism and the Fall of Chow ....
VIII. The Philosophers of the Hundred Schools .
IX. The Usurpation of T'sin and the Burning of the Books
X. Reign of the Han Dynasty (206 B.c-229 a.d.) .
XI. From the Three Kingdoms to the Souy Dynasty (221
620 a.d.) 
XII. The Tang Dynasty (620-907 a.d.) .
Historical Sketch ....
Intercourse with Foreigners
Literature, Orthodoxy, and Buddhism
Agrarian Economy of the Tang .
XIII. Chinese Finance from the Han to the Tang Dynasty
XIV. Posterior Dynasties and the Sung (907-1280 a.d.) .
XV. Agrarian Economy and the Innovator's Laws
XVI. Taxation and Finance under the Sung .
XVII. Two Literary Statesmen of the Sung Dynasty .
XVIII. Controversies, the Schools and the Examinations .
XIX. Foreign Accounts of China under the Sung and the
First Mongols ... .
XX. The Mongols after Kubla ....
XXI. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1649 a.d.) 
XXII. Education, Art, and Social Changes under the Ming
XXIII. Foreign Accounts of China under the Ming.
XXIV. The Mantchu Dynasty, called Tsing, 1644-****
XXV. Contemporary China 
XXVI. Life in Chinese Villages 
XXVII. The Wages and Organization of Industry
XXVIII. Commerce and Trade 
Chinese Moralists on Interest and Profits ....
Chinese Merchants of the Present Day ....

3
16
3°
42 54
65 78
85
97
108123
132132138
142
i5o\155
165 179 192
200
206-?i5229
237252 260
274 290
298310323
323 334

VI

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXIX.
XXX.
XXXI.
XXXII.

The Law of Marriage and Inheritance .
Agrarian Laws and Customs
Financial and Mercantile Offences
Miscellaneous Laws ; Administration
Institutions 
Conclusions . . . . .

and Social

l-AGE 344 356365371
384

APPENDICES.

A. Egyptian Chronology and Dynasties (I. 42) . . . 399
B. Egyptian Irrigation (I. 145) . .... 410
C Welsh Mortgages (I. 184, 323) . . ... 416
D. Babylonian Dynasties and Reigns (I. 259) . . 424
E. Metric Systems of Babylonia and Egypt (I. 337) . . 433
F. Peru (I. 4, 557 ; II. 13) . .... 452
G. Report of the Malabar Marriage Commission (I. 553) . 458
H. Chinese Classics (G bis. II. 11, 189)  475
I. China and Babylonia and the Yi King (I. 31 ; II. 16) 480
K. Chinese Families and Irish "Fines" (II. 69, 120) . 492
L. Chinese Dynasties (II. 123)  496
M. Use of the Staff (II. 77)  497
Index . .  501

BOOK IV

OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.

VOL. II. — P.C.

The head of the Ka family was richer than the Duke of Chow
had been, and yet K'ew collected his imposts for him, and in
creased his wealth.
The Master said, " He is no disciple of mine. My little
children beat the drum and assail him." — Confucian Analects.
Yao went to visit Hua. The border-warden of Hua said,
" Ha ! a Sage. My best respects to you, sir. I wish you a long
life." " Don't ! " replied Yao.
" I wish you plenty of money," continued the border-warden.
"Don't! "replied Yao.
" And many sons," added he.
" Don't ! " replied Yao.
" Long life, plenty of money, and many sons,'' cried the
warden ; "these are what all men desire. How is it you
alone do not want them ? "
" Many sons," answered Yao, " are many anxieties. Plenty
of money means plenty of trouble. Long life involves much
that is not pleasant to put up with. These three gifts do not
advance virtue ; therefore I declined them."
"At first I took you for a Sage," said the warden, "but now
I find you are a mere man. Heaven, in sending man into the
world, gives to each his proper function. If you have many
sons, and give to each his proper function, what cause have
you for anxiety ?
" And similarly, if you have wealth, and allow others to share
it, what troubles will you have ?" — Chuang-tzu.
" I have heard of men using the ways of our great land to
change barbarians, but I have not yet heard of any being
changed by barbarians."— Menaus.

PRIMITIVE CIVILIZATIONS.

CHAPTER I.
THE LAND AND ITS HISTOR Y.
The natural history of Egypt may be said to begin and end with the
inundation of the Nile, but it is impossible to give so compendious an
account of the conditions which enable the soil of China to maintain one-
third of the human race. The fortunes and history of China are mys
teriously linked with the geology of Central Asia; and the interdependence
of the different members of the favourite Chinese triad — Heaven, Earth,
and Man — is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in the experience of
the Chinese people. Chinese history traces the fortunes of a race, with
qualities determined by one set of conditions, in a country with qualities
determined by another set. So far as the character of the Egyptian race
is the product of the sun and the inundation, the history of the land and
the people have a common cause. But there is no such natural connec
tion between the inexhaustible fertility of the loess districts in China and
the character of the Chinese race, for the former is the result of causes
which ceased to work long before the ancestors of the latter came into
being. The two great tracts of ceaseless sun, which are barren both of civilized
human life and vegetation, are the deserts of Central Asia and the Sahara.
Both these deserts occupy the site of a dried-up inland sea — dried up
because, in the course of ages, the waste by evaporation from its wide
surface was greater than the reinforcements brought by the streams de
bouching into it. The Nile flows from the mountains of Abyssinia and
the equatorial highlands round Lake Victoria,1 the Tigris and Euphrates
from the highlands of Armenia and Kurdistan, all alike outside the rain
less regions. The streams which may once have fed the inland African
sea had no such sheltered sources, and have hardly left a trace behind.
The sea of Central Asia existed perhaps to a more recent date, and there
still survives, to show how it was fed, the Yarim or Yarkand River, which
flows into Lop-nor, after a course of 1,150 miles, longer than that of the
Rhine, and through a river-basin larger than that of the Danube. But
1 In the latter region the annual rainfall sometimes reaches ico inches.
3

4 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
with this exception, the streams that flow from the little lakes still
scattered through the desert, lose themselves in the sand ; others, rising
in the sand, flow only into lakes, which year by year waste and dwindle,
like the larger sea of which they once formed part, while the surrounding
mountains have long since ceased to nourish tributaries of sufficient
volume to reach them.
When, from whatever cause, the amount of evaporation over a given
area comes to exceed the rainfall, the radiation from the heated, barren
surface, of which more and more is left permanently dry, tends to disperse
the summer rainclouds, and so extends and intensifies the drought.
Prejevalsky saw this process at work in the desert of Gobi, between Alashan
and Naga, where a dog, which had been his companion for years, died of
the intense heat. No dew fell, and the rainclouds dispersed without send
ing more than a few drops to earth. " We observed," he says, " this in
teresting phenomenon several times, particularly in Southern Alashan, near
the Kansu mountains, where the rain, as it fell, met the lower heated
atmosphere and passed off in steam before reaching the earth." x
The drying-up of an inland sea extends the area over which moisture
is absorbed or dissipated, quite apart from the causes which have led to
its own contraction. This in Central Asia may have been due partly to
the gradual elevation of the sea bottom, which leaves the plateau of Gobi
three or four thousand feet above the sea level, as well as to the in
sufficiency of its fresh-water feeders. After wringing their last drops of
moisture from the currents of air flowing towards the interior, and already
desiccated by long journeys overland, the great mountain ranges sur
rounding the central basin send all the drainage of their high lakes or
snow-capped summits outwards to the distant ocean, instead of towards
the Mediterranean sea of sand. They intercept, instead of storing up,
the rainfall which might replenish the central basin.
The fact is that Central Asia presents too large and solid a surface to be
uniformly watered. Northern Africa is riverless except for the Nile, which
does but skirt its eastern edge ; the solid interior of Australia is barren ;
Europe and North America are perforated with seas and gulfs, though the
latter is not without an example, in the Great Salt Lake district, of the
way in which deserts may be formed. South America at its widest is
narrow enough for such a river as the Yang-tse-kiang to almost traverse its
whole breadth, while its mountain system allows the middle of the conti
nent to be watered by streams flowing north and south with overlapping
sources. In Asia alone we have a continental block, extending over some
sixty degrees from north to south, and as much from east to west. The
Indus, the Oxus, the Obi, the Yenisei, the Lena, the Amour, the Hoang-
ho, the Yang-tse-kiang, the Brahmapootra, and the Ganges are all streams,
for length and volume, of continental importance; but, with the one ex-
1 Afongolia, the Tangut Country and the Solitudes of Northern Tibet, being a narra
tive of three years' travel in Eastern high Asia. Lieut.-Col. N. Prejevalsky (Eng. trans.,
1876), p-267.

THE LAND AND ITS HISTORY. 5
ception of the Yarkand River, these streams, while fringing the central
plateau with their sources, contribute none of their waters to replenish the
Mediterranean Sea.
Thus year by year the sea has narrowed ; and as streams dry up and
showers grow scantier, the process of deterioration accelerates itself. The
dwellers in the few oases only hasten by their labours the encroach
ments of the sandy tide, for irrigation works increase the surface of the
water exposed to evaporation, and the crops that are consumed each
season make no return of moisture to the air equivalent to that which they
absorb. T'he scanty streams, unfed by rain or snow, prove unequal to
the constant drain, and with the exhaustion of the water supply the last
remains of vegetation fall an easy prey to the encroaching sands. This
has been the history of Central Asia ever since the present races of man
kind have inhabited or crossed it. Five thousand years ago, doubtless,
lakes and oases were more numerous, those still existing larger and more
fertile, and parts of the present desert perhaps not without a steppe-like
vegetation. The vales of Cashmere and Yulduz, the plains of Bokhara
and Khokan had counterparts, no doubt, within the mountain circle,
which, like the present Hi, Khami, Yarkand, and Khotan, were each the
centre of a principality of respectable size and enviable fruitfulness.
In comparatively recent geologic time it is supposed that changes of an
opposite character to these took place in China proper, that an increased
rainfall brought fertility to once barren steppes, filled the water-courses
with continuous streams, and carved for the latter an outlet into the sea.
But in Baron von Richthofen's admirable work on China, it is shown that
the effects of a period of rainlessness make themselves felt upon the soil,
and through the soil upon the climate, long after the great geologic or
climatic changes have been accomplished, which cause the district in
question to be no longer either riverless or rainless.
The work of water is not unmixedly beneficent, and we can judge how
much of the natural richness of the soil is carried off by an average rain
fall, from the treasures of fertility hoarded up in regions of perennial
drought. The natural fertilizers of an uninhabited and unfilled country
consist of all the decomposed animal and vegetable matter deposited on
its surface ; and when this is carried away by streams into the sea, it is
obvious that the soil must be proportionately impoverished. On the
other hand all these elements are retained on the surface, and tend to fill
up its hollows, when the streams charged with them gradually disappear by
evaporation instead of finding an outlet to the ocean.1 Hence the poten
tial fertility of all deserts and the ready transformation of any such tract
into fertile land as soon as art or nature provides the means of irrigation.
In China a fertilizing dust is sometimes carried by the wind in quantities
equal to that which darkens the air in the desert sand-storms, and this
dust is found to produce exactly the same effect upon the soil as similar
1 China: . Er'gebnisse e'igmcr. Reisen und darauf gegrundeter Studicn, Von Ferdinand
Freiherm von Richthofen, 1877, vol. i. p. 8.

6 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
deposits left by the overflow of rivers ; and this is not the only respect in
which aerial currents are found to produce effects analogous to those
usually attributed to water only. An ancient Chinese ode contains the
couplet " Great winds have a path ; they come from the large empty
valleys," and the action of these winds is as irresistible as that of a moun
tain torrent in its bed. The Chinese poet evidently had in his mind ex
periences like that of an unsuccessful Mormon colony in an exposed part
of the Salt Lake district. A recent writer,1 after describing how the settle
ment is swept by winds from a great canon, adds : " One year they sowed
three hundred acres with wheat, and the wind simply blew the crops away.
The people live for part of the year in a ceaseless dust-storm, and what is
not actually displaced is kept rubbed down to the ground by the perpetual
passage of waves of sand." Similarly, according to Prejevalsky, in the
Mongolian deserts, "The winds of winter and spring blow with such
violence that you see even the humble shrubs of wormwood uprooted by
them and rolled into bundles, and driven across the barren plain." a
General Gordon, noting the same phenomenon in North Africa, was
reminded that it must also have been familiar to the Psalmist of Palestine,
who desired to see his enemies made "like a wheel, as the stubble before
the wind." 3
Air, like water, scours the channels in which it flows, and carries with it
all the lighter particles of the objects in its path, and like water also, it
deposits in one place what it has swept away from another. A recent
English traveller in China observed at Ichang, on the Blue River, that on
a calm, mild, sunny morning in March, the sky was obscured by clouds of
otherwise invisible dust,4 and he adds that the dust-storms, which the
north-west gales of winter bring from the Mongolian deserts, carry the fine
sand particles for an incredible distance. The deposits thus left would
tend to raise the level of the lowlands more rapidly in proportion than is
done by the Nile flood, for in Egypt some of the surface soil would be
washed up and carried away down stream, whereas in China the wind
would not touch the soil of the valleys at all, except to raise them by de
positing its burden of sand, while it would tend to denude any hill-tops not
protected by vegetation, and thus operate doubly in reducing the face of
the country towards the dead level which characterizes most of it.
The inexhaustible fertility of the loess districts in Northern China has
been accounted for by the supposition that the whole formation consists of
pulverized rock and pulverized fertilizers, as if the richest alluvial land had
been heaped up for ages without the intervention of water. Perfectly dry
earth or sand drifts before the wind like snow, and if the air currents have
an uniform direction, it will spread itself gradually like a sheet of water or
mud, filling up the hollows of the valleys, and leaving no irregularities be-
1 Sinners and Saints. By Phil Robinson, p. 209.
" L.c, p. 20.
:* Ps. lxxxiii. 13.
4 Through the Yang-tse gorges, or 7'rade and Travil in Western China. By A. T.
Little, 1888, p. 88.

THE LAND AND ITS HISTORY. 7
yond the surface undulations of a sandy sea or snow-drifts. The loess of
China is a calcareous loam, wholly unstratified, extremely porous, consist
ing of innumerable vertical tubes, so friable as to crumble between the
fingers, and yet with enough cohesion to form vertical cliffs two hundred
feet in height, in which dwellings can be carved as substantially as in the
Old Red Sandstone.
The porousness of this formation is explained on the hypothesis that an
increased rainfall has dissolved the greater part of the saline incrustations
which form upon the steppes during the period of rainlessness ; x its thick
ness and extent have been accounted for by the joint ingenuity of German
and American geologists in the following manner. As long as the surface
of the ground is covered by vegetation, the elements of the undersoil re
main in situ ; the disintegration of the rock beneath goes on to an extent
which varies with its chemical composition, but may reach, as in the case
of granite or gneiss, a depth sometimes of several hundred feet. If, how
ever, this surface vegetation is destroyed, as by a period of rainlessness,
the layer of decomposed rock is at the mercy of either ice or wind, though
the more familiar action of water is excluded. Now in Northern China
there are no signs of a glacial period, and its felspathic rocks show no traces
of decomposition such as are met with in Southern Asia, where they have
been protected from erosion. Neither, during the period of loess forma
tion, was there any denudation of the rocks by water ; both denudation
and deposits here being the work of aerial influences alone. Inequali
ties in the surface of the rock, and the existence of basins and chan
nels, where water can never have lain or flowed, are attributed to the
unequal rate of disintegration, and the distinction already made between
lands that retain their surface fertilizers, and lands in which these are
washed away by rain and rivers, repeats itself in the distinction be
tween regions where the bare rock is exposed by seolian influences, and
those in which the same influences bring fresh deposits. As examples of
such sub-aerial deposits, it is enough to mention the still sandy deserts,
steppes, not yet free from salt, savannahs, the loess in China, Bavaria, and
Missouri, and at least three other soils of phenomenal fertility, the Russian
black earth, the Indian cotton soil, and the terra roxa, or red coffee lands
of Brazil, consisting of decomposed trap reaching to a depth of from twenty
to thirty feet.
China is only singular in the vast extent of the exceptionally fertile soil,
which stood ready to the hand of the first skilled agriculturists who might
claim it. The area of China is estimated at i-33rd of the habitable globe ;
its present population includes about one-third of the human race. Some of
its most fertile spots have unquestionably been under cultivation for up
wards of 4,000 years; and though the whole region now known as China
1 China. I.e., p. 126. The whole of chap, ii., Die Lbss-Landschaften im nbrdlichcn
China und ihre Beziehungen zu Central-Asien, and chap iii., Bildung und Umbildung
der Salzsteppen Central-Asien, are full of interest, nut merely to geologists. Cf. also
Pumpelly, Geological Researches in China, Mongolia and Japan, 1862-5. Smithsonian
Contributions to Knowledge, vol. xv. part iv.

8 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
proper has not beeit occupied by the Chinese for so long as that, most of
the remarks that would apply to the large empire of to-day would be equally
true of the first settlements of the spreading black-haired people.
Nowhere else within the temperate zone do we find a continuous tract
comprising an equal area of equally fertile soil, a country where the variety
of temperate, and the abundance of tropical, climates are combined in the
natural produce, and where benignant nature has set the fashion of good
government by making the struggle for existence so easy to her children.
The soil of Egypt might be equally fertile, but the requisite culture was
monotonous, and servile labour was skilled enough to sow before and reap
after the inundation. To profit by the varied productiveness of China,
the inventiveness of private enterprise stimulated by the institution of pri
vate property was necessary ; but some of the phenomena generally associ
ated with these phrases in the west are missing, for the end aimed at by the
economic system is substantially the same as in Egypt, though the method
is different. In Egypt, as we have seen, the base of the industrial order was formed by
a system of forced labour and subsistence wages. In the Middle Kingdom,
free labour and sufficient food would be the corresponding formula. As
in Egypt, for many ages food was normally so plentiful, by the pure bounty
of nature, that dearth appeared only explicable as the result of bad govern
ment ; and so, while reserving the right of the people to earn their own
food in their own way, the duty of their rulers was conceived to consist,
chiefly, in making not only such arrangements as should secure the free
labourers in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labour, but also such as
should make the labour itself as remunerative as possible.
Political liberty for the masses did not exist, and they had no right to
criticise the imperial measures, but all the more ruthless was the judgment
passed on the results of such administration. Was food abundant ? The
government was good, and the people orderly and contented. Was there
famine in the land ? The Emperor and his officers had neglected the
duties of their station ; they and not the people were to blame for the crimes
which followed invariably on the heels of misery. At the present moment
all we have to do with this ideal of the ruler's duties is to point out that it
could not have been formed, except in such an agriculturist's paradise as
Egypt, Mesopotamia, or China ; so that, even if formed in the golden age
before the dawn of history, it would have had to be renounced or modified
in China, but for the singular homogeneity of the region gradually incor
porated in the empire.
Surrounded almost exclusively by the sea and the desert, backed by
great blocks of cold highlands, the climate of China is as regular as the
seasons, each of which takes its character from broad cosmic influences,
which are not in this case materially modified by any local cause. There
is a regular season of rain and sunshine, each brought by winds from the
appropriate quarter, so that travellers can tell in advance at what time ot
year to start for a voyage up or down either of the great navigable streams.

THE LAND AND ITS HISTORY. 9
The succession of the seasons is almost the same throughout the country,
though the dates of each particular phase may vary.1
Another peculiarity of structure, which has facilitated the establishment
of a uniform and centralized government, is the relation of the rivers and
mountains, more particularly in the south. Not only has every river of
importance numerous tributaries flowing into it more or less at right angles ;
but even when no tributary stream divides the mountain ridges, these still
run at right angles to the river valley, not as a barrier across it. Though
the area of China is equal to that of all Europe, without Russia, and,
though it is by no means wanting in mountainous districts, none of these
make an internal barrier, separating one district from another as the Alps
separate Italy and Switzerland, or as the Kwen Lun and the Snowy Moun
tains separate the Chinese Empire and Tibet. The main streams of China
flow from west to east, and each of them is fed by more or less important
tributaries flowing south and north ; hence the means of communication
are much greater, even through difficult country, than when the main
streams flow in opposite directions and every source is a water-parting
separating at once and for ever the chief river systems of the continent.
The valley of the Rhine and the valley of the Ticino are politically
separate in a way that the valleys of the Yang-tse-kiang and the Yellow
River never are, even when the distance between them is much greater,
than that from Basle to Pavia. The main river systems are thus only
divided by chains of secondary importance, and the same peculiarity
makes it possible in many cases to establish artificial means of com
munication between them by canals, connecting the tributaries of different
main streams. This characteristic is most marked in the southern and
eastern provinces, which, as the last to be occupied, would hardly have
become so thoroughly incorporated with the older parts of the empire,
if the means of communication had not been so much better in their case,
as to compensate for the greater distance from the capital.
The prevailing absence of natural barriers between the course of different
streams has, however, another and less beneficial consequence. Nowhere
else within historic times has a stream of the importance of the Hoang-ho
changed its course so materially, when its proper outlet becomes too
shallow and confined to allow the passage of its waters. The consequent
inundations made the embanking of the natural watercourses a necessary
precaution, and the habit of " regulating the waters " of the largest rivers
no doubt prepared and encouraged the agriculturists to undertake on its
actual scale the not less beneficial, voluntary work of canalization.
1 M. Biot concludes from a comparison of the flora of the Classics witli the crops
cultivated in different parts of China at the present day that there has been no consider
able change in the climate of the country within historical limes. " Recherches sur la
temperature ancienne de la Chine," fourn. As., 3me ser., vol. x. (1840), p. 530. A
translation of what is called, "The little Calendar of the Hia," is appended (p. 552)-
This i» an almanack poem, — in the style of the Yueh Ling (Sacred Hooks of the jtast,
xxvii. p. 249), and the first ode of Pin (Shi-king, Chinese Classics, iv. Bk. xv.), — sup
posed to have been found in the tomb of Confucius about the 6th century A. I).

10 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
While the course of the rivers is such as to facilitate and promote in
land traffic, the conformation of the coast is the reverse of favourable to
foreign commerce. Harbours are few and bad, the mouths of the rivers
are silted up with sand ; there is but one bay of any importance, and none
of those gulfs and indentations which invite and almost compel the
dwellers on the coast to carry on their traffic by help of short cuts across
the water. The inferiority of their neighbours on the north and south
prevented any equality of intercourse, either political or commercial ; while
the industrial instincts of the people found ample satisfaction in the pro
duction of native articles of use and luxury, which each province could
exchange as far as needful with other parts of the empire.
In no other civilized country in the world could it have been seriously
proposed, as a defence against piracy, to lay waste a strip of ground a few
miles wide all along the coast : but the sacrifice involved by this curious
measure was, after all, inconsiderable. The great lines of traffic are all
inland, and, for commercial purposes, the coast of the provinces on the
east of the Great Canal is to be found on its banks rather than by the real
seashore. In fact, the inundations, which were the one danger to Chinese
agriculture, served indirectly to stimulate and promote Chinese commerce.
The cuttings, which were necessary for drainage and useful for irrigation,
served also to provide water-ways for trade, and so to prevent the exclusive
dependence on agriculture which has a cramping effect on natural de
velopment. The political history of China has been much simplified by these
features in its physical geography. The only natural barriers which are
formidable enough to serve as the frontier of an important State are the
Yellow River, the Yang-tse-kiang, and the mountain ranges on the east
and north of Sz'chuen, which isolate that large and fertile province. But
the empire was never divided for long together into four great States, of
Northern, Southern, Central, and Eastern China. The great dynasties
ruled over the whole territory annexed by settlers of the dominant race.
After the fall of one of these dynasties, the political disorganization of
which this fall was the result manifested itself in the formation of a number
of minor kingdoms or feudal principalities ; then the process of integration
commenced afresh, and the smallest States were absorbed, until there re
mained only three or four rivals powerful enough to aim at restoring the
unity of the empire.
The official histories of China never recognise more than one Imperial
dynasty at a time, though the Imperial dynasty did not always govern the
whole empire, sometimes hardly a quarter of it ; but the slightness of the
barriers between one part of the empire and another was seen when any of
the rival States began to grow in power. Any moderately strong Govern
ment found it easy to overstep either or all of these natural landmarks ;
and as soon as one was overstepped, there was seldom any halt till the
next was reached. For a time the Hwai might serve as a division between
north and south ; but that was only a stage in the process by which

THE LAND AND ITS HISTORY. n
the master of the Yellow River usually drove his rivals back behind
the Kiang, as Kubla drove the Sung emperors before abolishing their
dynasty. The obstacles in the way of a United China never took the form of a
local patriotism entrenched behind natural frontiers. The difficulties to
be overcome were moral rather than material, and the immense territory
normally united under the Emperor of China depended for its political
unity on the vigour and capacity of the administration. There was nothing
in the physical structure of the country to suggest or perpetuate the poli
tical subdivisions which followed upon imperial inefficiency; and if the
people were seldom willing to fight with much enthusiasm for a sovereign
who was losing the empire, they were always ready to submit with a good
will to one who was rainina; it.
China, in the third millennium B.C., was far from being an uninhabited
country ; and to judge from the tribute exacted from some of the wild
tribes which continued to inhabit it, the latter were not altogether ignorant
of the arts of civilization ; but they were not confirmed agriculturists like
their invaders. The occupation of China is interesting as the earliest in
stance of appropriation by use, and that upon a national scale. The
agriculturists appropriated the arable land. The indigenous population
was treated by the Chinese like squatters by a " free selector." The
black-haired people picked out the eyes of the land. They spread along
the course of every fertile river valley, settling, improving, draining swamps,
cutting canals, building embankments, but always with a colonizing in
stinct, occupying first every spot that would repay cultivation without much
labour, and so spreading a network over the whole country, the meshes of
which could be drawn tighter at leisure. The colonization of the Yellow
River and the great plain probably took place as gradually and as peace
ably as the later colonization of the Blue River, or that of Mongolia at the
present day.
Ancient China was in the main the country lying between its two great
rivers, the Hoang-ho and the Yang-tse-kiang. The earliest contemporary
document preserved in the Shoo-King, or classic Book of History,1 is a
description of the nine provinces, the nine rivers, and the nine mountains
of the kingdom as it existed in the 23rd century B.C., the tribute exacted
from each province and the engineering works supposed to have been
included in the imperial survey. This document, called the Tribute of
Yu,2 has every internal mark of authenticity. With its native curtness
undisguised by imaginative commentators or translators, it appears as a
precious though meagre itinerary and revenue survey. We learn from it
approximately the extent of the primitive kingdom, and from its extent can
form a conjectural estimate of its prehistoric duration, which Chinese tra-
' Appendix G., Chinese Classic*.
* The Sacred Books of the East, vol. iii. (containing The" Sacred Boohs of China,
pt. i.), p. 64 ff. The text of the Shoo-King is translated here at length by Dr. Leggc ;
but for full annotations, see the same author's Chinese Classics, vol. iii.

12 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
dition scarcely exaggerates. The nine rivers 1 are, besides the two already
named, the Wei, down the course of which the original settlers must have
spread after the Hoang-ho turned too far to the northward to be their
guide ; the Lo, which waters the present provinces of Honan and sepa
rates Loyang and Honan-fu, the ancient capitals of two different dynasties ;
the Hwai, which meets the Hoang-ho at its mouth after a long, straightish
course frcm west to east. The Tsi, a river which is described as flowing
from the Tai Yuen mountains into the Ho, and then out again to the
sea, by a course not now traceable, and perhaps changed in the lapse of
ages ; the Han, which after flowing eastward, between two ranges of hills,
wanders deviously southward and reaches the Yang-tse-kiang through a
region of lakes and swamps.
And besides these seven considerable and more or less identifiable
rivers, two are named, obviously lying at the western extremity of the
kingdom, one of which is described as losing itself in the desert sands, and
the other as flowing into the Southern sea. These last are scarcely con
clusively identified. In a map, copied by Dr. Legge from a Chinese
source, the Black-water appears as the name of the western bend of the
Hoang-ho, and the Jo-shin, or Weak-water, as a tributary of the Kiang,
not answering to the position of any actual stream. Of course the
" southern sea" merely stands for the unknown goal to be reached by a
stream flowing southward out of sight, and it may safely be assumed that
both these streams were of much less importance than those reached after
wards, as almost any river would make an impression on the minds of
travellers just emerging from the bed of the rainless and streamless Han-
hai, or dry sea.
The gratuitous references to unknown waters in the south, can only have
been prompted by the primitive Chinese expression " within.the four seas,"
which later writers are avowedly unable to explain, and which has less
meaning in China than in almost any country on the globe. Most prob
ably the Chinese immigrants brought it with them as an inheritance from
generations that lived between the Caspian Sea and the Asiatic Mediter
ranean, the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Aral with perhaps a much larger
Balkash Lake.
The nine mountains mentioned in the book of Yu have been a puzzle
to geographers who have looked for them upon the map of China, as they
cannot be identified with any of its more important ranges. Baron von
Richthofen, however, has been enabled to identify most of them with great
plausibility,2 by, literally, putting himself in the place of the original colon
ists occupying the river valleys already described. Every one who has
lived in a valley knows that the hills which bound the view and im
press the imagination of the inhabitants, are by no means necessarily the
1 China, i. pp. 314-338. The Chinese Classics, with a translation, critical and exe-
getical notes, Prolegomena and copious indexes, by James Legge, D. D. (in seven
volumes) ; vol. iii. The Shoo-King, pt. i. pp. 129-140.
2 China, i. pp. 304-313.

THE LAND AND ITS HISTORY. 13
highest in the neighbourhood ; it was such hills that the Chinese named,
and Yu enumerates, and some of them still bear names identifiable with
those used by him — a confirmation, if one were needed, of the view which
conceives the immigrants as making their way through China along its
river banks.
The provinces are grouped in three classes, three in each, but in a
different order for fiscal and descriptive purposes. The highest revenue is
not necessarily drawn from the provinces containing fields of the richest
quality ; and as the purpose of the latter classification is not explained, we
are left to guess that perhaps it referred to the quality of the land available
for village allotments, the quantity of which was regulated by its richness,1
so as to secure about the same average amount of produce to the culti
vators in different districts. The theory of the Government was to exact
an increasing proportion of its dues in the form of personal services from
the cultivators nearest the capital, while those at a distance contributed
produce only ; and as the same system was followed in ancient Peru 2 and
modern Manipur, it may easily have been acted upon in ancient China.
According to this description of the nine provinces, the whole extent
of territory claimed for ancient China is more than double the size of
modern France ; and it is not strange that sceptics should have tried to
impugn the authority of such an almost incredibly ancient and circum
stantial survey, on the ground that the Chinese Empire can hardly have
been as highly organized as it implies at the time in question. But be
sides all the external and internal evidence for its authenticity, there are
phrases here and there which bear involuntary testimony to the existence
of the state of things which alone could make the composition of such a
document possible.
Such a mapping out of provinces with tribute assessed, so as in each
case to bring the maximum of wealth to the imperial treasury, while in
flicting as little burden as possible on the distant taxpayers, presupposes a
powerful and well-informed Government familiar with the whole of its wide
dominions. Yu or his scribe has thus not merely navigated the streams of
the Middle State, the Lo, the Wei, and the great Yellow River ; he has
stood where the modern city of Woo-chang looks down upon the conflu
ence of the Han and the Kiang, and, with the monumental brevity of the
archaic tongue, in six characters he represents these two rivers joining
their waters and rushing together to the sea "as if they were hasten
ing to court." A commentator of the Ming Dynasty, who had visited
the same spot, writes with more prosaic amplitude,3 " The vast flood dash
ing on brought to my mind the idea of a man hurrying with all his speed
on some special mission without a thought of anything else." But for us
the use of the image has a real historic value, as it brings before us a state
1 When land is measured by the quantity of seed used ta sow it, its quality is as easily
ascertained as its size.
2 Appendix F.
' Legge's Chinese Classics, iii. p. 1 13.

i4 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
of society in which it appears natural to illustrate the irresistible rush of a
rapid current by a reference to what, therefore, must have been the familiar
sight of a king's messenger in headlong course, or the steady stream of a
long procession forming the train of a provincial noble, summoned to do
homage to his liege lord in the capital of the empire.
It is not necessary for our purpose to analyse the tribute required from
the different provinces. Varnish, silk of all kinds, woven ornamental
fabrics in baskets, salt, cloth of dolichos fibre, hemp, lead, pine timber,
bamboos, and various choice woods, pearl oysters and fish, jade, gold, iron,
silver, copper, flints, grindstones and sounding-stones, fur skins and feathers,
ivory, rushes, cinnabar, and minor curiosities are among the articles
enumerated. Tea, cotton, and porcelain are still unknown. Of the six
, grains which figure in modern maxims — rice, millet, pulse, wheat, panic,
and rye— the earliest enumerations do not mention rice. Upon the whole,
though there is less abundance and display of the precious metals, the
peace resources of China include as great a variety of articles as the war
spoils of a Thothmes or a Rameses.
Of the eighteen provinces into which modern China is divided, eight lie
to the south of the Yang-tse-kiang, and do not belong to the ancient king
dom at all. The ancient Yang included most of the districts recently
divided into the two provinces of Ngan-hwuy and Kiang-su, and the re
maining eight provinces north of the Kiang include the whole region
settled, with increasing completeness, by the black-haired people down to
the dynasty of Chow, or the period of " Middle Antiquity," reaching from
1122 B.C. to 255 B.C. The whole of the great plain which extends from
Peking to the Poyang lake, and for a nearly equal distance, at its widest,
from west to east, is comprised in these provinces. Pe-cjie-li, the northern
most, in which Peking is situated, is still the most barren ; Shantung, on
the eastern coast, contains part of the great plain, and is one of the most
fertile of the northern provinces ; the birthplace of Confucius is in the
western end, and during the feudal period this district belonged to the
state of Loo. These two provinces now supply the largest contingents of
colonists to South Manchuria, which they are practically annexing as their
ancestors did the lands of the eastern barbarians, of whom mention is made
more than once by Confucius.
The ancient counterpart of Kansu, at the opposite extremity of the
northern empire, is supposed by Richthofen 1 to have extended beyond
the Yu-mon passage, which now marks its western limit. The modern
province of Honan, once the " Middle Kingdom," with Loyang for its
imperial capital, is so densely populated as to be able to export little corn
or cotton. Shansi, traversed by the Yellow River, is a land of coal and
iron, the latter of which has been worked from a very remote period. Its
natives are remarkable for a genius for commerce, and virtually control the
trade of Central Asia and Manchuria. " Calculating brain power," accord-
' China, vol. i., map iv., facing p. 338, and for the nine provinces, pp. 348-364.

THE LAND AND ITS HISTORY. 15
ing to Richthofen, is their chief article of export, and they supply clerks
and merchants to the rest of China.
The southern part of both Hoope and Shensi belong rather to Southern
than Northern China ; the former consists of alluvial plains subject to
inundations, with mountains on the east and west. It is now the focus of
the inland traffic, and the carrying trade from Honan and Tchekiang is
in the hands of the inhabitants. Cotton and tea are the only staple
articles of production, so the population is not exclusively agricultural.
The north of Shensi is, however, still a perfect granary, as it has been for
thousands of years. Sz'chuen, which in the earliest times communicated
with Northern China through Si-ngan-fu, is now usually approached by
water on the Yang-tse-kiang. Geographically it has more in common with
Yunnan, the " Far West" of modern China, than with the northern pro
vinces, which also abut upon it and contain the most ancient settlement of
the Chinese race ; and until the complete annexation of Southern China
made it more readily accessible, its isolation formed a standing exception
to the general compactness and free intercommunication of the rest of the
empire. In regard to China, it is hardly safe to take any kind of knowledge —
geographical any more than historical — for granted; and as one can
hardly understand the economic position of the empire without a glance at
its history, to follow its history it is necessary to outline at least thus
roughly the relation between the existing provinces and the most ancient
subdivisions on record. In the interval it will always be sufficient for out-
purpose to know approximately whereabouts the theatre of events is situated
in relation to the permanent natural landmarks and centres of civilized
population which have never ceased to be of importance ; to trace par
ticular boundaries or identify individual towns through the changes of
name imposed by different dynasties is neither possible nor necessary, and
the less necessary because of the substantial similarity of the large areas
sometimes made the subject of ephemeral political subdivision.

CHAPTER II.
THE ANCIENT MONARCHY.
Politically there has been more change, more development, and less
stationary conservatism in the 4000 years of Chinese civilization than in
the 3000 or more of Egyptian independence. But socially, industrially,
and intellectually, China may bear the palm of unchangeableness in virtue
of the longer, still continued national life, which seems to have undergone
no material revolution in its character since the earliest records that have
reached us.
These records differ curiously from those which give such trustworthy
though incomplete guidance as to the life of ancient Egypt and Babylonia.
The early books of the Shoo-King have not the same monumental authen
ticity as the inscriptions of Senoferu and Gudea. But they are the work
of men who have formed the habit of recording statements and occurrences
of political importance, with a disinterestedness not to be found in merely
triumphal monuments. When the great encyclopaedist of the 14th cent.,
Ma-twan-lin, tells us that the "pencil of the recording officer has been
busy from the time of Hwang ti," 1 he is only repeating earlier and vera
cious writers, whose records reach into the remote past without coming to a
time when the pencil was not at work. The commentators explain that if
the emperor gave a charge to any officer or prince, it was the duty of an
official called the "Recorder of the Interior" to write it upon tablets and
to do so in duplicate ; and no public duty was esteemed more sacred
than to keep a veracious record.
The first few books of the Shoo-King, or Book of Histcty, the oldest of
the intelligible Chinese scriptures,2 do not profess to be contemporary
records. Each one begins with the phrase, " Examining into antiquity
we find;" but from the 12th century B.C. to the Burning of the Books
(212 B.C.) our authorities are tolerably varied and continuous; while the
scantier glimpses which we obtain of the preceding 1000 years are enough
to show that the two periods have at least as much in common with each
other as the China of Kanghi had with that of Kubla. The most recent
document in the Shoo-King belongs to the 7th century B.C., and from that
period onward there is no dearth of material bearing on the history and
social condition of the people of China, though it is to be regretted that so
1 The Texts of Confucianism. Translated by James Legge. Sacred Books of the East ,
vol. iii. p- 6.
2 The Yi-King may be older, but can scarcely be called intelligible. Cf. Appendix I.
16

THE ANCIENT MONARCHY. 17
few of the original Chinese authorities have been made accessible to
European students by translation.
The legendary history of China may be said to begin with the Emperor
Yao, who died, according to Chinese chronology,1 in the year 2257 B.C.,
after a reign of 100 years, the most mythical figure in the records. The
first book in the Shoo is called the Canon of Yao, and we find in it already
fully developed some of the most characteristic elements of subsequent
Chinese thought and morals. The mythical emperors anterior to Yao are
first mentioned in comparatively late writings : the first of them is supposed
to have taught his subjects to make huts of branches, which is probably an
etymological afterthought ; the second taught the use of fire ; the third,
Fouhi, invented marriage and the hundred families, divination and music ;
the fourth introduced agriculture and trade ; the reign of the fifth,
Hwang-ti, was memorable for the invention of bricks, the cultivation of
silkworms, the development of writing (the origin of which is mixed up
with the mystic trigrams of Fouhi), and the establishment of the Imperial
Record Office and the historiographers, to whose industry we are certainly
indebted for the surviving State papers which constitute the Shoo-King.
All these inventions are attributed in turn to every local legendary chief,
and with equally little reason, since the founders of Chinese civilization
were not Chinese princes at all, if, as now appears probable, the black-
haired people brought with them all the arts of a simple civilization ready
made from the west.
What one may regard as the authentic element in the tradition of the
period shows us this people face to face with the natural difficulties which
beset new colonists, almost lost in a vast continent, among strange tribes
who are best content to leave their native wildernesses unreclaimed ; and
liable to have the fruits of their industry swept away by river floods.
To the present day the names of Yao and Shun are in proverbial use to
represent the golden ages of the empire. According to the Classic, a
common man of the name of Shun was chosen by Yao as his minister,
son-in-law and successor, after a review of all the talents of the country.
Shun was evidently the hero of a Cinderella-like legend, though in the
course of time Chinese rationalism has caused most of the incidents of the
primitive folktale to be obliterated.2 His reign is memorable in Chinese
legendary history for the floods which led to the salutary mission of the
great Yu, who is supposed to have removed mountains, and excavated
river beds, besides setting the fashion of such more practicable draining
and embanking as has been practised continuously to the present day, in
works of which the Grand Canal is the most remarkable instance. Yu
was appointed to succeed Shun, as Shun had succeeded Yao, and notwith
standing the exaggerated accounts of his labours as an hydraulic Herculesi
we first find ourselves touching the solid ground of history in the Domes
day book of ancient China ascribed to him under the name of The Tribute
of Yu. His virtues were only regarded as inferior to his predecessors'
1 V.post, App. K. 2 S.B., iii. p. 36.
VOL. II. — P.C. C

1 8 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
in the fact that he did not seek through the kingdom for the worthiest
successor, but appointed his own son and founded the dynasty of Hia
(2205-1766 B.C.).
His grandson was idle, dissipated, and provoked the hostility of the
subject princes ; and a contemporary poem appeals against him to " the
Lessons of our great ancestor," that the people should be cherished and
not despised, " for the people are the root of the country, and when the root
is firm the country is tranquil. But when the palace is a wild of lust, and
the country is a wild for hunting, when spirits and music and costly build
ings are indulged in to excess," J— the existence of any one of these things
has never failed to be the prelude to ruin. A return to better government
averted the judgment for a time, but the eighteenth king of the dynasty
proved to be intolerably cruel and dissolute: his own domains suffered,
and he endeavoured to extend his oppression to the better ruled dominions
of the feudal nobles. Meanwhile Thang, called the Successful, prince of
Shang, had gathered his own people together, and by threats and promises
— with many protestations that heaven had called him, the " one man," to
destroy the house of Hia and reign more justly himself in its place — he
prevailed upon the forces of the empire to follow him to a victorious cam
paign. Notwithstanding the purity of his motives, sanctioned too by
success, he was uneasy as to what posterity would think of him, and had
an apologetic "Announcement " composed and published for his justifica
tion by the prime minister.2
Exactly the same protestations, the same denunciations of crime, cruelty,
and oppression are repeated when in 11 22 B.C. the dynasty of Shang is
dethroned, and that of Chow founded by King Wu, the son of Wen. The
details as to the transgressions of the last king of Shang (or Yin) 3 are
described at greater length; but there is just the same tone of moral
indignation ; the precedent of King Thang is expressly quoted, and it is
treated almost as a constitutional principle that when the king of China
misbehaves, it is the duty of the most virtuous and powerful of the pro
vincial princes to depose and succeed him.4
This, as we shall see, is not the only point on which the political philo
sophy of ancient China was advanced and revolutionary. But before
pursuing this subject, the odes which commemorate the early ancestors of
the kings of Chow may be referred to, to fill in the outlines of the first
settlements under former dynasties. A very famous ode begins with the
statement : " The first birth of the people was from Keang Yuen "—the
mother, by a miracle, of How-tseih, who is nearly the only personage in
the classics, besides Shun, whose name is associated with one of the
world-wide tales of mythological folklore. His legend is much fuller than
1 S.B., iii. pp. 79, 80. 2 //)., p. 85.
3 The name of the dynasty was changed when a new capital was founded by King Pan-
kang, B.C. 1401. Pan-kang rebuked his ministers for hoarding " cowries and gems,"
instead of " fostering the life of the people" (S.B., iii. p. no), but Chou, with whom the
dynasty fell, himself overtaxed his subjects to hoard money in his palace.
4 L.c, p. 125 ff.

THE ANCIENT MONARCHY. 19
that of the mythical emperor Shinnung, and contains more points of re
semblance with the Chaldasan story of Sargon, though the resemblance
only proves both to belong to the region of pure myth. Modern Chinese
commentators take for granted that the lady Keang was married, though
childless ; but the genuine legend contains no reference to any husband,
and the story is probably one of the few surviving indications that the
primitive Chinese theory of descent approximated to that of the Egyptians.
There are just hints enough in one stanza to enable us to recognise
the type of folktale of which How-tseih must have been the hero : " placed
in a narrow lane," the sheep and oxen protected him; "placed in a wide
forest," the wood-cutters came to his rescue ; " placed on the cold ice,"
a bird sheltered and supported him. After escaping all these dangers the
infant hero differentiates himself as a Chinaman by proceeding forthwith
" to plant large beans," instead of strangling snakes or slaying dragons.
" His rice, hemp, wheat, and gourds prosper marvellously." Clearing away
the thick grass, he sowed the yellow grains and taught the people to cul
tivate the four kinds of millet — the black millet, the double kernelled, the
tall red and the white, to distinguish between the early and the late, to sow
first pulse and then wheat, " and thus he was appointed lord of Ta'e " and
minister of agriculture to the emperor Shun.1 Another ode celebrates the
same hero as the first who gave wheat and barley to be food for the multi
tudes, and diffused the rules of social duty through the wide realm.2
Four or five hundred years after the supposed date of How-tseih, a
settlement of the people in Pin is described as conducted by a somewhat
more historical Duke Lew, of whom an ode narrates : " He divided and
subdivided the country into fields. He stored up the produce in the fields
and barns." Apparently finding his territory overcrowded, "he surveyed
the plain, he ascended to the hilltops ; in sympathy with the people he
made a proclamation ; in his devotion to the people he continued his ex
plorations to the 100 springs and the ridge on the south, a height affording
space for multitudes ; " here the officers gathered round him upon mats
and stools, and the scale of the whole proceedings may be estimated from
the festivities at the close of the council. The generous Duke " had sent
to the herds and taken a pig from the pen ; he poured out his spirits into
calabashes, and so he gave them to eat and to drink." After determining
the points of the compass, " he surveyed the light and the shade," i.e. the
fields with a south exposure, suitable for the staple grain supply, and those
in the shadow of the hill, suitable for trees or the hardiest crops ; " he
viewed the streams and springs, he measured the marshes and plains ;
he fixed the revenue on the system of common cultivation of the fields ;s
he measured also the fields west of the hills, and the settlement of Pin
became truly great." *
Notwithstanding all this, another ode introduces us to a third hero, the
ancient duke, Tan Foo, who removes his people from Pin to the plains of
1 Legge, Chinese Classics, vol. ii. p. 468. 2 lb., p. 580.
3 Post, pp. 42-9. * Legge, iv. 483.

2o OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
Chow, 1325 B.C., and provides them with huts and caves, for as yet they
had no houses. In concert with his wife, the lady Keang, he chose the
site for a settlement ;. " he divided the ground into large tracts and smaller
portions ; he dug the ditches, he defined the acres." The superintendent
of works and the minister of instruction were charged with the building of
the houses and the ancestral temples ; " with the line they made every
thing straight, they bound the frame-boards tight, crowds brought the
earth in baskets, throwing it in and ramming it down with shovels,
... the trees were thinned and roads for travelling opened ; " in fact,
all the pioneer's work ascribed to Yu 900 years before was supposed to be
done again by all the ancestors of the new dynasty, without much regard
to their remoteness from the existing period of civilization.
Other odes mention with praise the road-making and forest-clearing
achievements of later princes, and it may of course be said that these
poems do not imply a fresh beginning of the arts and agriculture— only the
foundation of a new settlement. Just as there are in America colonists
who have spent a lifetime in " going west," so as to keep always just ahead
of the rising tide of population, so in China for many centuries it seems to
have been a favourite undertaking with the most enterprising chiefs of
the growing settlements to migrate into roomier quarters. This constant
opening up of new territory might easily lead the Chinese emigrants to
underestimate the remoteness of their own first experiences of this kind,
for the civilized descendants of the aboriginal tribes, with whom they came
successively in contact, would retain a true recollection of the beginnings
of agriculture in their own region ; and these recollections would blend
partly with the traditional features of the legend of Yu, and partly with
particular traditions of family migrations, with the result of reducing all the
semi-historical leaders of different ages to a single type.
That the Chinese themselves did not learn agriculture in China is
beyond a doubt. Just as the family life of the Vedic Aryans is coeval
with their existence as a pastoral people, so that of the Chinese does not
go back to a time when the black-haired people were not agricultural.
The Chinese cultivated and irrigated the ground before they framed the
character that stands for " son," which is compounded of the sign for
strength and the ideograph fj] consisting of four squares, which repre-
1 Mrs. Williamson, the wife of a Chinese missionary, describes " rather a novel way "
of housebuilding which she saw on her travels ; and though the method is anything but
" novel," her account is clear enough to serve as a commentary on this ode. From a
pillar at each of the four corners of the proposed dwelling "two long planks were
fixed in the form of a trough. . . . Into this trough three men and a boy were busily
shovelling mud lightly mixed with straw. After shovelling in a quantity, they laid down
their spades, got into the spaces between the planks, and stamped most vigorously on the
mud ; then another filling was succeeded by another stamping, and so on tilt the mud was
beaten hard. The planks were then slipped up and the process repeated till the wall was
completed." (Old Highways in China, p. 71, 1884.) For the real beginning of this
way of building we must go back to Babylonia, where one of the bi-lingual tablets
describing the creation of all things tells how the " Lord Merodach " raised a bank (lit.
'• filled a filling") on the sea-shore. Transactions of the Ninth Congress of Orientalist'!
(London, 1892), vol. ii. p. 192.

THE ANCIENT MONARCHY. 21
sents the " channeled fields." From the earliest times, the birth of a male
child was thought of as bringing the addition of a strong worker to the
agricultural community, as the revolution of the seasons was thought of in
reference to the return of harvest.1 Of course it may be said that the
evidence of language carries us further back than that of any written
characters. But we know from another source that Chinese writing is
certainly at least as old as the historical constitution of the family, and
probably older, because it takes us back to the time when genealogies
were traced through the mother habitually, and not merely in the ex
ceptional case of a heaven-born hero ; Itsing, the character for " surname,"
is compounded of two signs for "woman" and "birth," and the eight
most ancient surnames are said to be written with that symbol.2
Another trace of customs akin to those of Sumer and Akkad may be
seen in the tradition which assigns to the reign of Shun the division of
the land into twelve districts, subject to the "'Twelve Pastors," under the
presidency of an officer called " The Four Mountains'^? a reminiscence
of the " Four Regions "). Such a division could not have been invented
at a later time when only nine provinces were known, and it therefore
testifies to the antiquity of the record. At the same time the internal
administration of the country was divided into departments under re
sponsible ministers ; and the habitable world within the " four seas " was
theoretically divided between the Imperial domain, the domains of the
nobles surrounding this, a larger area of border lands called the " peace-
securing domain," where Chinese influence was making its way pacifi
cally, while the still larger " domain of restraint " and " the wild domain "
consisted of the more or less entirely barbarous regions into which
criminals were banished. If we knew nothing else about the character
and history of ancient China, it is at least a fact of some importance
that these terms were in use at the time when its first records were
compiled. The home of the rulers of the black-haired people appears in the
' " Tribute of Yu " as the " Middle Kingdom ; " it is then the seat of a
highly developed national civilization and an imperial government which
recognises only tributary allies or feudal dependants, and barbarous
tribes whose submission is expected to follow spontaneously as they
learn gradually to value the blessings of peace and civilized protection.3
Under the Chow kings the name of the Empire and the political
significance of the name remain unaltered. The influence of Chinese
rule radiated from a centre, and the settlements where wealth, industry,
and population abounded most and had struck their roots deepest were
in the midst of the future fields of conquest of the race. But as the
people spread, the States on the outer circle, so to speak, of Chinese

1 The earliest written character for "a year " represented a- grain of wheat. (China,
R. K. Douglas, p. 231.)
2 lb., p. 224. * S.B., iii. p. 47-

22 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
influence, were able to expand at the expense of their barbarous neigh
bours, while the older and smaller States first formed were enclosed by
the growing territories of the border princes and distanced by them in
importance. When the Yin-Shang Dynasty was superseded, Chow was
almost a border State ; but its neighbours on the east, south, and north,
Tsin, T'soo, and T'sin, which supplied the next dynasty, had larger terri
tories available for future conquest and settlement.
The period during which the Chow Dynasty occupied the throne is
called " Middle Antiquity ; " and Confucius, who lived towards the close of
it, insists on the continuity of Chinese tradition through preceding ages.
According to him, " The Yin Dynasty followed the regulations of the Hia ;
wherein it took from or added to them may be known. The Chow
Dynasty has followed the regulations of the Yin ; wherein it took from or
added to them may be known. Some other may follow the Chow ; but
though it should be at the distance of a hundred ages, its affairs may be
known." l And the survival in the China of to-day of features and institu
tions older than Confucius justifies us in crediting his assurances that the
moral and political ideas to which he gave fresh currency were, in fact, an
inheritance from times already ancient.
In comparing the regulations of Chow with those of the earlier dynasties,
Confucius gives the preference to Chow, which, profiting by the experience
of the past, had excelled it in the " complete and elegant " character of its
ordinances. These ordinances are embodied in the voluminous work
known as the Chow Li, or " Rites of Chow," 2 the authorship of which is
ascribed to the Duke of Chow, the virtuous and disinterested brother of
King Wu. The Duke of Chow, like Confucius, did not claim to be an
innovator, and the latter is probably right in his belief that the Rites of
Chow differed from those of Yin and Hia mainly in the " completeness
and elegance " with which they were written out.
Each section of this Blackstone of ancient China begins with a formula
asserting the royal supremacy ; the king determines the cardinal points,
the position of the capital, the boundaries of the provinces, and it is he
who appoints the ministers and separates their functions. Then follows
a list of the officers of every degree attached to the department, and then
a detailed account of the minister's functions, or of the regulations which it
is his business to enforce. These lists of departmental functionaries and
employees, which preface each section, remind us of similar lists of work
men, officers and overseers by name which the Egyptian scribes are so
often called on to furnish, as if to satisfy their superiors that each depart
ment has its due complement of officials. One of the Books of the
Shoo, dating from the early years of the dynasty, and called " The
Officers of Chow," gives an abridged account of the six departments of
1 Analects, ii. xxiii. § 2.
2 Translated by the late M. Ed. Biot, Le Tcheou Li, ou Rites des Tchcou, 2 vols.
Paris, 1 85 1.

THE ANCIENT MONARCHY. 23
State, and at least all the points upon which the two documents are
agreed may be accepted as historical.1
The subdivisions of the official hierarchy are substantially similar to
those still in force, and it would be the very wantonness of scepticism to
reject the positive evidence given as to their antiquity merely on the
ground that it would be easier for such institutions to endure for a period
of two thousand years than for three. Indeed, as an elaborate bureaucracy
existed in Egypt and Mesopotamia, it is actually easier to suppose the
Chinese administration to have been organized in the same manner from
the first, than that such similarity of method should have been achieved
independently at distant times.
The astronomical knowledge of the Chinese was almost certainly derived
from their kinsmen in Mesopotamia, but during the ancient monarchy
great importance was attached to the correctness of astronomical observa
tions. The emperor had fixed the length of the year at 366 days, and
certain clans or families, to whom these calculations were assigned, were
instructed to observe and publish the precise dates of midsummer and
winter, and of the spring and autumn equinoxes. The verification of
Chinese chronology is based upon the position of the constellations referred
to in these instructions,2 and as the Chinese at the time of Confucius,
when the sacred canon assumed its present form, were not acquainted with
the precession of the equinoxes, it is obvious that no forger could have
calculated backwards so as to give a correct description of the heavens
nearly 2000 years before his own time.
Dr. Legge suggests that new dynasties introduced a new beginning of
the year when the errors in the calendar had accumulated so as to alter
the correspondence between the solar and^the political year; and the pro
minence given in the Shoo-King to the regulation of the seasons was not
1 S. B., iii. p. 226. The prime minister or general regulator has authority over all the
other officers, though he is more particularly concerned with the imperial household,
revenues and records. His department is called the Ministry of Heaven in the Book of
Rites, and is now represented by the Board of Civil Office. The Shoo describes the second
department as that of the Minister of Instruction. The Chow Li includes that function in the
same department, but also describes the " Minister of Earth " as Director of the Multitudes,
and his function as those of a Minister of Agriculture. There is no difficulty in identify
ing the third department, " the Ministry of Spring " of the Chow Li, with the modern
Board of Rites and the Minister of Religion in the "Officers of Chow." The fourth
department is that of the Ministry of War or the executive power, whose chief is called
the " Officer of Summer " in the Book of Rites. The Minister of Autumn answers to
the Minister of Crime, whose office survives in the present Board of Punishments. The
present Board of Works corresponds to the sixth ministry described in the Shoo, and to
the account of the Ministry of Winter, or official works in the Book of Rites ; but the
section descriptive of the latter department is missing, and the fact that in the " Officers
of Chow " the Minister of Works is described as undertaking great part of the functions
which in the Book of Rites are assigned to the Director of the Multitudes (whom we
have called Minister of Agriculture) may explain how it came to be lost owing to its seem
ing redundance. According to the Shoo-King, the Minister of Works "presides over the
land of the empire, settles the four classes of the people and regulates the seasons for v
obtaining the advantages of the ground," and acts as " overseer of the unoccupied,"
allotting lands for cultivation and townships. The modern Board, which takes the place
of the Ministry of Instruction, is the Board of Revenue.
2 Legge, Chinese Classics, vol. i. pp. 20-28.

;24 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
dictated by pure enthusiasm for astronomical science. Such regulation
was regarded as an outward and visible sign of sovereignty like the pos
session of a Board of Historiographers. And we may charitably assume
that the political importance of a due regulation of the calendar and the
timely prediction of eclipses was the cause of a sanguinary clause, quoted
from the "Statutes of Government" during the reign of the fourth king
after Yu, and therefore very possibly as ancient as the Canon of Yao :
-"When they (the astronomical clans or families) anticipate the time, let
them be put to death without mercy ; when behind the time, let them be
put to death without mercy."1
While the Recorder of the Interior was required to take notes of the
speeches or edicts of the ruling emperor, the Recorder of the Exterior was
supposed to keep the books of the chronicles of the past, and to record
the histories of the states in all the parts of the empire. The importance
of the department as a sign and instrument of imperial supremacy may
be guessed from the significance attached to the control of the Calendar.
Mencius complained that in his day the feudal princes destroyed ancient
records to favour their own usurpations ; and in China it seems always to
have been peculiarly impossible for any prince to make history who was
not also in a position to write or have it written. One of the earliest signs
of the rebellious pretensions entertained by the State of T'sin, which
superseded Chow, was the establishment of a bureau of historians to keep
the State records.
The historical documents of the Shoo-King belonging to the Chow
Dynasty date mainly from the reigns of Wu himself and his immediate
successor. The death of the latter and the accession of his son are com
memorated in two pieces, and two more are assigned to the reign of the
next prince, with whom begins the degeneracy of the royal house. This
brings us to the middle of the ioth century, B.C. ; after that there is only one
piece belonging to the 8th century, and one of the 7th century by a Marquis
of T'sin, ancestor of the founder of the fourth dynasty. The Duke of
Chow, whom Confucius regarded as his patron saint and good genius, is
credited with the composition of many of the documents of the Shoo, as
well as of many poems in the Book of Odes and of the Rites of Chow ;
but he is the last of the ancient Chinese magnates who aims thus at the
direct instruction of the people.
These documents answer to the inscriptions of Egyptian and Assyrian
kings, and with their cessation the power of the pen passes into the hands
of the literary class, to which the official historiographers themselves
belong. The native writers expressly state that the practice of making
verses to satirize and condemn the Government was introduced in the
reign of King E (934-909 B.C.); and a very considerable proportion of the
classic odes, the study of which was enthusiastically recommended by
Confucius, are of this character.
The two ideas of historical veracity and the sacredness of letters are
1 S.B., iii. p. 82.

THE ANCIENT MONARCHY. 25
closely associated in China, and for nearly thirty centuries successive rulers
of the Middle Kingdom have been exposed to the tacit censorship exer
cised by the remorseless faithfulness of the "pencil of the recorders."
One of the stock examples of public virtue in China is that displayed by
the historiographers of Tse in the year 547 B.C. A general in that State
had married the widow of a prince of the ruling house, and was jealous of
the attentions paid her by the reigning marquis, whom he accordingly
assassinated. The State historian duly recorded the fact in his chronicles,
and was put to death by the general. Upon this the pen passed into the
hands of a brother of the deceased, who forthwith recorded the second
murder, and was in like manner put to death. His successor, undismayed,
continued the damning record, and the general abandoned the contest.
Meanwhile the rumour of the occurrence had spread to other States, and
the "Historiographer of the South," hearing that the " Grand Historio
grapher " and his brother had died in this way, took his tablets and set
out for Tse, and only returned home after ascertaining that the record had
been duly made.1 While thus resolute to record all the truth, it was
equally a point of honour to set down nothing but the truth, and " the
historiographer would leave a blank in his text " 2 rather than risk mis
informing posterity by guess work.
The Chun Tsew, or " Spring and Autumn," is a brief historical work,
composed by Confucius, in the form of a very meagre chronicle. But the
importance attached to it may be explained if it were the first example of
a general history of China, published independently by a private person,
ns distinct from the official records kept in each State for the benefit of
posterity, and probably quite inaccessible to private citizens. Chinese
commentators feel bound to seek for hidden meanings in its bare records,
because Confucius himself spoke of being known and remembered through
the "righteous decisions" of this work.3 But this is needless if merely -to
record the misdeeds of a ruler was virtually equivalent to censuring them.
The chronicling of affairs of State by unofficial persons may have been
regarded at first as an audacity, like the first publication of a newspaper
in countries where the general public is not expected to desire any know
ledge of State affairs. If so, however, the power and pretensions of the
literary class must have grown apace, since the commentators soon begin
to puzzle themselves over the phrase of Confucius, and seek for indications
of praise and blame in trifling variations of expression, such as speaking
of a bad prince by his personal name instead of by the complimentary
periphrasis required by custom in the case of the dead.'1 On the whole it
1 Chinese Classics, vol. v. pt. ii. The Cli'un Ts'ew, with the Tso Chuen, p. 514.
'' Analects, xv. 25.
' Mencius (iv. pt. ii. xxi. § 3) represents the sage as saying himself of this work : " Its
righteous decisions I ventured to make."
* C.C., v. pt. i, p. 5, n. 4. The Li-ki contains many rules about the names to be used
or "avoided ; " cf. S.B., xxvii. pp. 93 (where historical and literary compositions are ex
empted from the duty of avoiding names), 101, 107, no, III, 190 ; and xxviii. 18, 27,
-etc. Tso's Commentary (C.C., v. pt. ii. p. 50) gives curious details respecting name super
stitions. In naming a child, " the name must not be taken from the name of the State, or

26 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
seems probable that for a private person to write history in the 5th century B.C.
was an innovation of the same kind and degree as that effected in the 10th
century, when private persons presumed to give currency to their political
sentiments in classic verse. And Mencius himself directs attention to the
change in a way significant of its import: "The traces of imperial rule
were extinguished, and the odes ceased to be made ; when the odes ceased
to be made, the Ch'un Ts'ew was produced." J
The historian's claim was not exactly for freedom of the pencil ; it was
taken for granted that kings would object to uncomplimentary records if
they knew of them ; what was demanded was that the chronicles of the
Record Office should be regarded as "privileged" and their privacy
respected. Dynasties in China are not expected to live for ever, and the
official history of each royal house is usually compiled and published by its
successor. For a reigning prince to inquire curiously into the records
made respecting his own life and character has been recognised for at least
the last thousand years as a grave indiscretion.
An emperor of the Tang Dynasty (643 a.d.) claimed to know what the
historiographer said of him, on the plea that he must know his faults
before he could correct them. He was answered: "It is true your majesty
has committed a number of errors, and it has been the painful duty of our
employment to take notice of them — a duty which further obliges me to
inform posterity of the conversation which your majesty has this day very
improperly held with us."2 Similarly, when, towards the end of the ist
century B.C., a learned descendant of Confucius was accused of disrespect
towards a deceased king of the reigning dynasty, he appealed to the im
partiality of the historic records. It was written, he pointed out, that the
great king, notwithstanding his other merits, had shown too much favour
towards the Taoist superstition. If he himself were punished for repeating
the judgments of history, that too must be recorded, and his sovereign
would have to bear the blame in future ages.
There is so little innovation in China that it is fair to assume this
standard of historical virtue also to be derived from antiquity, and there
is thus a sort of retrospective witness in favour of the authenticity of
documents which can now be neither controlled nor confirmed by direct
positive evidence. Chinese self-esteem and Chinese want of imagination
together guarantee us against the danger of being seriously misled by
accepting as approximately true native traditions, which in any other
country would need to be submitted to minute and suspicious criticism.
of an office, or of a mountain or river, or of any malady, or of an animal, or of a utensil,
or of a ceremonial offering." The effect of such a course would be " to do away with
the state or the office, with the sacrifice to the hill or river, with the use of the animal
as a victim, and the use of the utensil or of the offering in ceremonies."
1 Mencius, Life and Works, iv. 2, xxi. § 1 (p. 261 of popular edition).
2 De Mailla (vi. p. 98) represents the historiographer as promising to record the vir
tuous sentiment expressed by the emperor, after he has been rebuked by the statement
that no emperor had ever yet read what was written about him, though every emperor
was deterred from transgression by the fear of having his misdeeds recorded.

THE ANCIENT MONARCHY. 27
The stone drums of the Chow Dynasty l should probably be counted as
authentic monuments of the 9th century B.C., and the Annals of the Bam
boo Books may rank with the Babylonian chronicles in authority for the
whole of the Chow Dynasty, while for earlier days they are based on
materials which the scientific historian will find far from useless.
The so-called drums are ten in number ; they are large waterwom
boulders, roughly chiselled into shape, and have been preserved since
1307 a.d., by the principal gate of the Temple of Confucius, at Peking.
Three of them have inscriptions still substantially legible, in the manner of
the shorter odes, describing royal hunting and fishing expeditions. They
were found half buried in a waste piece of ground in Shensi, early in the
Tang Dynasty, and are described in works published in the reign of
Tai-Tsong (627-649 a.d.). Early in the 9th century a.d., a "Geographical
Description of Provinces and Cities " mentions a number of scholars as
"unanimous in regarding the inscriptions as ancient and of great value.
Long years have elapsed since the time when they were engraved, and
there are now some lost and undecipherable characters, yet the remains
are well worthy of attention." 2
The majority of Chinese authorities attribute the inscriptions to the
reign of Seuen (826-780 B.C.). The locality where they were found was a
portion of the ancestral territory of the founder of the Chow Dynasty, and
an earlier emperor than the one to whom they are ascribed was said to
have engaged in a great hunt there. Han-yu wrote a poem describing how,
in 806 a.d., he recommended their removal to the national university, and
lamenting their neglect and decay. A few years later, however, they were
removed to the Confucian temple of Feng-hsiang-fu, where they remained
throughout the Tang Dynasty. They were dispersed and lost sight of
under the Five dynasties, but under the Sung a prefect of the city re
covered nine of them, and the tenth was found, 1052 a.d., in the possession
of a private person.
The Sung carried the drums with them on their retreat, in 1108 a.d.,
to Pien-ching, and a decree was passed that the characters of the in
scriptions should be filled in with gold, to illustrate their value, and to
prevent their injury by repeated rubbings to obtain facsimiles.3 The
Nuche Tatars carried off the drums when (11 26 a.d.) they conquered
the Sung capital, and the gold was dug out of the inscriptions, which
remained in neglect till the Mongols placed them in their present position.
Last century the Emperor wrote some verses on them in the fifty-fifth
year of the Kien-lung period, which are engraved, together with those of
Han-yu, on a tablet in the temple.
1 Dr. Bushell (Journal of the N. China Branch of the Royal As. Soe, N.S., viii.,
1874) complains, with some reason, of the neglect of these antiquities in Europe, where
so much interest was shown in the— about contemporary — Mnabite stone. His article
contains facsimiles of the inscriptions, with translations and a full history of the stones
since their discovery, and the Chinese literature on the subject.
2 lb., p. 135.
3 Dr. Bushell describes the method of taking such impressions used by Chinese
scholars, the result of which " is a singularly perfect and durable reproduction."

28 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
The characters are more archaic than in the Shuo wen,1 the ancient
dictionary of the Han Dynasty, some of them retaining a semi-hieroglyphic
character, e.g. that for park, an enclosure of four squares, each containing
the suggestion of a tree. One scholar of the Sung Dynasty questions their
authenticity, doubting whether the monuments could have been preserved
1,914 years, the interval between King Senen and himself; but the general
opinion of the Chinese, supported by Dr. Bushell and M. Chavannes, is
in favour of their authenticity.
The Bamboo Books were discovered nearly four centuries earlier than
the drums. In the 5th year of the first emperor of the Tsin Dynasty (279
a.d.), it is recorded that " some lawless parties in the department of Keih
dug open the grave of King Seang, of Wei (who died 295 B.C.), and
found a number of bamboo tablets, written over in the small seal charac
ter, with more than 100,000 words, which were deposited in the Imperial
library." 2
The earlier records, from the mythical emperors onwards, have mainly
to do with prodigies ; but the entries respecting the Shang Dynasty —
beginning in the 18th century B.C. — have an historical sound, and con
tain just such information as one would suppose ancient historiographers
to preserve. The founder of the dynasty, Thang the Successful, is said, in
the 21st year of his reign, to have cast metal money. In other reigns it
is said where the king dwelt, what cities he walled, what sacrifices he
-ordered, what expeditions he conducted, whom he appointed minister,
and so forth. A "great hunting" is mentioned in the 22nd year of Te-
sin, otherwise the wicked Chou, with whom the dynasty ends, 1049 B.C.
There is an entry for every year of King Wu, after he obtained the
empire, and in the following reigns at intervals of three or four years, less
or more, as events demand. 997 B.C. we are told a prince " made a
palace in a beautiful style. The king sent and reproved him." In the
reign of King Seuen, to whom the drums are attributed, entries are fre
quent — yearly from the accession to the 9th year, then in the 12th, 15th,
16th, 18th, 21st, 22nd, 24th, 25th, 27th, 28th, and 29th year : this year
" for the first time he neglected the setting an example of husbandry in
the 1,000-acre field." Then we have entries for the 30th, 32nd, 33rd,
37th, 38th, and 40th years, in the last of which " he numbered the people
in Tai-yuen," and again in the 41st, 43rd, and 44th ; in the 46th he died.
King Yew (780 B.C.) began to increase the taxes in his second year, and
in his third " became enamoured of Paou-sze." 3 King Pin (769 B.C.) in his
third year conferred honours on his Minister of Instruction ; but after this
the entries get shorter and scantier, with the decline of the royal power,
and the transfer of political preponderance to other States. " Our present
king," in whose 20th year the chronicle closes, is Yin (313 B.C.). But
it is in the reign of Heen (367 B.C.), who boasted to Mencius of having
thrown open his preserves in the Marsh of Fung-ki 4 for the benefit of the
1 L.c, p. 153. 2 C.C., iii., Shoo-King, Prolegomena, p. 106.
' C!. post, p. 79. * Mencius, i. iii. 1.

THE ANCIENT MONARCHY. 29
people, that the chronicler begins to speak of what " we " and " out-
king" did in the different years.
The modern Chinese speak of " the three dynasties " as if the records
of all alike belonged in the same sense to their ancient history. But for
portions of the Chow Dynasty, as has been seen, contemporary documents
and coins are forthcoming in sufficient numbers to exclude all suspicion
of legendary inventions. With regard to the preceding dynasties scepti
cism is possible, and it is not a matter of vital importance for our present
purpose whether Chinese records may be trusted for the fact that parties
of traders reached China from the west in the reign of Shun and in that
of Tang, and more than once subsequently during the Shang Dynasty,
the name of which M. Terrien de la Couperie translates "Traders."1
The famous sexagenary cycle, in use from remote times for reckoning
days, — a sort of double month, like the double hour of Babylonia — was
not applied to years till Ssema-tsien, who found materials for a uniform
system of chronology going back to 841 B.C. The generally accepted
Chinese scheme which places Hwang-ti in 2699 was only invented in the
nth century a.d., and cannot be reconciled with the chronology of the bam
boo books. M. Terrien de la Couperie proposes an alternative to both,
making Hwang-ti, approximately, 2362 B.C.; Yao, 2076; Shun, 2004;
and Yu, 1954. A solar eclipse falling in 1904 will then occur in the third
reign after Yu. He supposes the Chinese to have brought with them
from the west the knowledge of gold, silver (afterwards called "the-
obstinate metal," from the difficulty of obtaining it in North China),
copper, and antimony or tin ; and to have learnt the use of bronze from
the west, in the 18th century B.C. The change of capital by Pan-kang is
dated in this scheme 1389 B.C.
1 Catalogue of Chinese Coins, p. vii. S.

CHAPTER III.
POLITICAL ETHICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.
There is the same resemblance between the oldest passages in the Shoo-
King and the sayings of Confucius, that there is between the books of
Ptah-hote'p and Kaqimna and the collections of demotic proverbs made
thousands of years later. And in their earliest form the Chinese maxims
probably still date from the youth of the Old World, when the Middle
Empire of Egypt was in its glory and Assyria still a dependance ruled by
patesis. At this time the qualities regarded by the black-haired people as proper
to a virtuous ruler were "reverence," intelligence, unfeigned courtesy, the
appreciation of merit in his subjects, and the power of conciliating the
upper classes of the nation, while enforcing peace and order among the
lower. If calamities befel the State, the ruler thought the fault must lie
in himself, and sought for a virtuous colleague to help him in rectifying
what was wrong.
The great Yu is reported to have warned his patron and predecessor,
the aged Shun: "If within the four seas there be distress or poverty,
your heaven-conferred revenues will come to a perpetual end ;" x where
as, "If the sovereign can realize the difficulty of his sovereignship and
the minister the difficulty of his ministry, the government will be well
ordered, and the black-haired people will sedulously seek to be virtuous."2
And the " Great Plan," a document of the Chow Dynasty, which is sup
posed to embody some of the wisdom of Yu, preserved in the archives
of the intervening dynasty, contains the first version of a truth frequently
rediscovered and repeated by Chinese statesmen, that crime and disorder
are the direct consequences of popular distress, and progress in virtue of
material competence.3 A virtuous king does not slight the occupations
of the people ; he thinks of their hardships in the heat and rain of summer
and the great cold of winter, and he labours to promote their ease. He
remembers the difficulties of their life as he remembers the perils of his
own high office. The sovereign depends upon the obedience and ability
of his subjects for the execution of his wishes, as the people depend upon
the sovereign for the direction of their labours. The duty and virtue of
officials is to reverence the multitudes, to foster the life of the people,*
1 S.B., iii. p. 50; Analects, xx. 1. 2 S.B., iii. p. 46.
3 S.B., iii. p. 143. * Id., p. 79.
30

POLITICAL ETHICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 31
not to enrich or aggrandize themselves. Those who have ability and
administrative power are doubly bound to virtuous conduct. The fall of
dynasties is caused by disregarding the awfulness of the people, as their
prosperity is caused by exercise of the "essential virtue" of royalty, —
benevolence or love of the people. The king must not neglect the con
dition of the most abject ; the friendless and childless, and still more the
" wifeless men " and widows, are the objects of his compassion.
The doctrine vox populi, vox dei was frankly proclaimed from the throne.
Thang announces after his victory over the house of Hia that " Great
heaven has conferred on the inferior people a moral sense, compliance
with which would show their nature to be invariably right. To make
them tranquilly pursue the course which it would indicate is the task for
the sovereign." x The second king of the Chow Dynasty declares, even
more emphatically, that "The people are born good, and are only cor
rupted by external circumstances."2 The prosperity of the country comes
from the people, while its misfortunes come from the ignorance or guilt of
its rulers. And he exhorts one of his nobles to go about amongst the
people seeking their judgment on doubtful points, in accordance with the
saying of the ancients, quoted in a poem of the 9th century B.C. : " Con
sult the gatherers of grass and firewood," 3 a class no doubt equivalent
to the charcoal-burners or broom-makers of the west.
It is the duty of both kings and ministers to "practise good husbandry,"
tearing up evil by the roots and cultivating rich crops of merit ; but the
theory of ministerial responsibility is also fully developed. The prime
minister of Thang the Successful, whose name signifies the " protector
and steelyard," is credited with having said : " If I cannot make my
sovereign like Yao or Shun, I shall feel ashamed in my heart as if I were
beaten in the market place ; " while if any of the people failed to get what
they wanted, he said, "It is my fault."* Confucius was of the same way
of thinking, and refused to accept from his disciples, when in office, the
excuse that what was done wrong was done by their master's orders
against their own desire. For, he continues, rather disrespectfully towards
the masters in question, " When a tiger or wild bull escapes from its cage,
whose is the fault?"5 as if the function of a good minister was like that of
the keeper in a menagerie, to chain the evil propensities of the dangerous
animal in his charge.
When claiming obedience, the king speaks of himself as "the one man,"
but on other occasions he indulges in the self-depreciatory tone which is
still de rigueur among well-bred Chinamen ; he is the servant of heaven,
and the "little child," and the duty of " reverence " is no less incumbent
on him than on his ministers. When Goethe treats reverence as the base
of education, he includes parents and rulers with Heaven, among the
powers above for whom reverence is easy ; while the lessons of reverence
1 S.B., iii. p. 90 2 lb., P- 234.
¦' Chinese Classics, vol. iv. She-King, pt. ii. p. 501.
' * S.B., iii. p. 118. * Analects, xvi. 1, § 7.

32 , OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
for the earth below and the equal playfellow are reserved to more advanced
scholars.1 But in China it seems rather that Heaven and the People are
the two spheres which overarch the rulers of men, dispensing praise
and censure and looked up to by them with reverence and awe.
It may be doubted whether, from that day to this, rulers with the con
stitutionally unbounded rights of a. paterfamilias have ever been so frankly
confronted with the parental view of the obligations of royalty. Besides '
endorsing, as editor of the sacred books, the sentiments professed by the
ancients on this subject, Confucius intersperses his views on personal pro
priety and character with maxims of the same tendency. In reply to a
disciple, he defines the essentials of government to be "sufficiency of food,
sufficiency of military equipment, and the confidence of the people in their
ruler;" if one of these must be done without, let it be the military equip
ment ; if two must be sacrificed, part with the food, " from of old death
has been the lot of all men,"2 but the foundation of the State is in the
people's faith.
The head of a noble family consulted him about the best way of reduc
ing the number of thieves in the State. Confucius said, "If you, sir, were
not covetous, although you should pay them for it, they would not steal." s
As he admired the populousness of the State of Wei, a disciple asked, since
the people were thus numerous, what else should be done for them. " En
rich them," was the reply. "And when they have been enriched, what more
shall be done?" The master said, " Teach them,"4 adding on another
occasion, "There being instruction, there will be no distinction of classes,"
— a doctrine which the subsequent history of China confirms and illustrates
in a manner very honourable to the sage.
The first excellent parts of government are for the ruler to " be bene
ficent without great expenditure," and to lay tasks on the people without
causing discontent ; or, as it is further explained, when he "makes more bene
ficial to the people the things from which they naturally derive benefit,' '5 and
when he employs them upon labours beneficial to themselves. The idea is
repeated more simply by Mencius, who contends that the way to get the
empire is to get the hearts of the people, and the way to get their hearts " is
simply to collect for them what they like, and not to lay on them what they
dislike;"0 but we shall not find till Goethe, an equally profound and popular
account of the true function of government to that of Confucius. Again,
rulers must take care of their virtue, without which they will lose the people ;
having the people gives them territory, having the territory gives them
wealth and means of expenditure. " Virtue is the root, wealth is the result.
If he make the root his secondary object and the result his primary, he will
¦wrangle with his people and teach them rapine." 7 In another place, " There
1 The spirit of Wilhelm Meisler is in many respects Chinese, notably the conception
of a ruling class whose function it should be to secure " Vielen das Erwiinschte" to the
Many that which they desire.
2 Analects, xii. vii. 3 lb., xii. xviii. 4 lb., xiii. ix. §§ 2-4.
5 lb., xx. ii. § 2. ° Works, iv. i. ix. § I.
• The Great Learning, §§ 7, S.

POLITICAL ETHICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 33
is a great course for the production of wealth. Let the producers be many
and the consumers few. Let there be activity in the production, and
economy in the expenditure. Then the wealth will be always sufficient ; "J
the consumers referred to are the salaried officers of the Government, who
alone are not expected to contribute to the production of wealth. The
one fatal sentence, on the other hand, is for a prince to say, "I have no
pleasure in being a prince, only in that no one offers any opposition to
what I say." 3
Mencius is still more uncompromising. An officer of Sung said to him
that he was not yet able to abolish the duties charged at the markets and
frontiers and to reduce the land tax to a lawful tithe. " With your leave
I will lighten, however, both the tax and the duties until next year, and
will then make an end of them. What do you think of such a course?"
Mencius said, " Here is a man who every day appropriates some of his
neighbours' strayed fowls." Some one says to him, " Such is not the way
of a good man; " and he replies, " With your leave, I will diminish my
appropriation, and will take only one fowl a month, until next year, when
I will make an end of the practice. If you know that the thing is un
righteous, why wait till next year?"3
An oppressive ruler will not only lose his life and his kingdom, but will
earn an eternity of shame. " He will be styled ' the Dark,' or ' the Cruel ; '
and though he may have filial sons and affectionate grandsons, they will
not be able in a hundred generations to change the designation,"4 which
is a curious sort of anathema, but certainly better adapted to act upon the
mind of a Chinese egoist than the scriptural warning that the sins of the
father will be visited on the children to the third or fourth generation ;
for it is the egoist himself who has something to lose if the virtues of his
children are never to be visited on his head, even though they should be
virtuous through 100 generations to coriie.
When kings themselves asked the sturdy moralist for his advice, it was
administered in the form of Socratic interrogation. "Is there any dif
ference between killing a man with a stick and with a sword ? " King
Hway of Seang opines that there is no difference. " Is there any differ
ence between killing a man with a sword and with bad government ? "
" There is no difference," was the reply. Mencius said : " In your kitchen
there is fat meat ; in your stables there are fat horses. Your people have
the look of hunger, and on the wilds there are those who have died of
famine. Your dogs and swine eat the food of men, and you do not know
to make any restrictive arrangements.5 There are people dying from
famine on the roads, and you do not know to issue the stores of your
granaries for them. When people die, you say, ' It is not owing to me ;
it is owing to the year.' In what does this differ from stabbing a man and
killing him, and then saying, ' It was not I, it was the weapon ' ? "6
1 lb., § 19. 2 Analects, xiii. 15, § 4.
3 Works of Mencius, Book iii. pt. ii. ch. viii. 4 lb., iv. i. ii. § 4.
5 As enjoined in the Book of Rites, see post, p. 35.
0 Works, i. i. iii. § 5, iv. §§ 2-4.
VOL. II. — P.C. D

34 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
King Seuen of Tsi fared no better. He was asked : " Suppose that one
of your majesty's ministers were to intrust his wife and children to the care
of his friend, while he himself went into Ts'oo to travel, and that on his
return he should find that the friend had caused his wife and children to
suffer from cold and hunger; how ought he to deal with him?" The
king said, " He should cast him off." Mencius proceeded, " Suppose that
the chief criminal judge could not regulate the officers, how would you deal
with him ? " The king said, " Dismiss him." " If," finally asked the
terrible sage, " if within the four borders of your kingdom there is not
good government, what is to be done? " We have no difficulty in believ
ing the truth of the record that "the king looked to the right and left, and
spoke of other matters."1
On another occasion the same prince was equally discomfited when his
inquiry as to the proper duties of the chief ministers, bearing the same
name as the sovereign, and therefore regarded as his relatives, was met by
the information, that the difference between them and other ministers was,
that in the event of the king governing ill and refusing to amend, it was
the duty of his relatives to depose him, while other ministers were only
bound to abandon his service. In the same spirit Mencius maintains : " The
people are the most important element ; the spirits of the land and grain
are the next ; the sovereign is the lightest. Therefore to gain the pea
santry is the way to become emperor. . . . When a prince endangers
the altars of the spirits of the land and grain, he is changed, and another
appointed in his place."2
The verdict of popular favour is to be trusted as well in regard to the
selection of officers as of princes and emperors. " When all those about
you say, ' This is a man of talents and worth,' you may not for that be
lieve it. When your great officers all say, ' This is a man of talents and
virtue,' neither may you for that believe it. When all the people say,
' This is a man of talents and virtue,' then examine into the case, and
when you find that the man is such employ him." And the same caution
is recommended in regard to the verdicts, " This man won't do," or " This
man deserves death." •" "The people killed him," is a proverbial saying to
describe the fall of obnoxious ministers. It will be remembered that in
Egypt the stewards administering royal or other estates were held re
sponsible if their rule was proved by its results to have provoked popular
¦discontent ; and China is perhaps the only Oriental country in which the
same principle prevails to the present day, so that a mandarin whose
government has been sufficiently oppressive to provoke a riot is ipso facto
disgraced ; and, by the Code, an officer who drives the people to rebellion
by oppression is put to death,4 while ovations and testimonials by popular
subscription reward the labours of the really upright and honest officials,
who are to be met with occasionally, even in the degenerate Empire of to
day. 1 Works, i. ii. vi. 2 lb., vii. ii. xiv. 3 lb., i. ii. vi. §§ 4, 5.
4 Ta Tsing Leu Li, tr. by Sir George Staunton. (Penal Laws of China, ccx.)

POLITICAL ETHICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. ,35
The bold utterances of our~two philosophers have no doubt contributed
to preserve a Chinese counterpart to European " freedom of the press " in
the right to criticise and even to lampoon unpopular officials ; and, as an
officer is liable to be thought the worse of at Peking for inspiring such
compositions, public opinion exercises a real check upon abuses which
exceed the customary standard.
The political economy of China squared with its ethics. The payment
of taxes in kind was the rule, but even then the exaction of a fixed rent
was objected to in the interests of the cultivators. An ancient worthy,
quoted by Mencius, declares : " For regulating the lands there is no better
system than that of mutual aid, and none that is not better than that of
taxing. By the tax system the regular amount was fixed by taking the
average of several years. In good years, when the grain lies about in abund
ance, much might be taken without its being oppressive, and the actual
burden would be small. But in bad years the produce not being sufficient
to repay the manuring of the fields, this system still requires the taking of
the full amount ; " the result of which is that the peasants are compelled
to borrow, aud " old people and children are found lying in the ditches
and water channels." 1
The Book of Rites contains some striking provisions expressly designed
to prevent the State charges from becoming an oppressive burden on the
cultivators. The amount of rice consumed per head of the population was
estimated at about i\ lbs. per diem in an average year. With a bountiful
harvest it might rise to 2 lbs., and in a bad year it might fall to 1 lb. ; but
it was the duty of the officers in charge of the public granaries to watch
the harvests and the state of the public stores, and when the lower limit of
consumption was reached, to import grain from adjoining provinces, to re
move the people to more productive regions, and to warn the sovereign to
reduce the expenses of the State. In times of famine the king had no
great feasts, and all other optional items of expenditure were curtailed, to
the admiration of Wang-tchi-tchang, a commentator of the Ming Dynasty,
who praises the kings of Chow for adjusting their expenditure to their
revenue, instead of, like his own contemporaries, regulating the taxation of
the people by the expenditure of the prince.2
In the first chapter of the third book of the Li Ki this theory of public
expenditure is expressly formulated ; the year's receipts are to be calculated
as soon as possible after harvest, and the expenditure regulated accord
ingly. The general rate of expenditure ought, it was held, to be deter
mined upon the average revenue for thirty years — a period long enough to
allow good and bad years to balance each other. A thriving State was one
in which a surplus had been accumulated sufficient to provide for a series
of six bad years ; a State that had not a surplus sufficient for three years
was doomed to prompt extinction. Apparently a third of the produce in
normal years was assumed to be available for accumulation, so that the
nine years' store represents the savings of twenty-seven years ; and it seems
1 Works, iii. i. iii. § 7. 2 Cf. Tcheou-ll, i. 392-4.

36 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
that the sages who chose thirty years as the period for which an average
should be struck, only expected three really bad years to occur in the
time. At least they regarded the three bad years as certain to befall, six
as sufficiently probable to need guarding against, and nine as the utmost
limit of possible calamity. Those who had nine years' stock in hand were
virtually secure against want.1
According to one text, a tithe of the revenue was set apart for sacrifices,
and the rites of mourning for parents were allowed to absorb this tithe
during the three years devoted to them. This is nearly the only recogni
tion of a tithe for religious or quasi-religious purposes in China, and pro
bably represents a very ancient fragment of tradition. The king received
a tithe of the national produce, and he may have been anciently ex
pected to spend a tithe of the revenue so obtained upon the rites of public
worship ; but an earlier passage in the same book describes the Son of
Heaven as retaining nine-tenths of the produce of his domains for his own
use, and employing the other tenth to defray the charges of the public
offices. Lavishness, like that of the Egyptian kings in the service of the gods, is
entirely contrary to Chinese ideas of propriety and justice ; and there was
no spiritual hierarchy to be endowed apart from the Boards of Government.
The appropriateness of all offerings to spiritual beings was held to lie in
their abundance. Each class of the community is supposed to sacrifice a
specimen of that in which their wealth consists, and kings, princes, and
great officers were warned rather against sacrificing too much than too
little. "Without sufficient cause a prince did not kill an ox, nor a great
officer a sheep ; " 2 and, as private festivities were restricted to the scale
of expenditure thought proper for sacrifices, the latter conformed to the
national standard of frugality.
The primitive religion of the Chinese probably stood nearer to that of
Egypt and Babylonia, both in the kind and quantity of its observances, than
modern Chinese writers would lead us to suppose. Besides all the traces
of nature-worship met with in the Classics and Tso's commentary, there is
a personage mentioned in Ssema-tsien's Treatise on the Fong and Chan
Sacrifices,3 who reminds us of the Egyptian Cher-heb, in his character of
reading or praying priest. There were " official prayers," one of whom
was called " le prieur secret," whose business it was to perform a sacrifice
for the benefit of the prince, which, from the nature of the case, could not
be done publicly, as its object was to cause an evil with which the
sovereign was threatened, to be diverted from him to some other object.
Akkadian hymns are familiar with the idea of a scapegoat, animate or
inanimate, but this sort of conjuration offended Chinese morality; and an
author who died 237 B.C. narrates4 how a Duke King of Sung, refused to
have 'it performed - for his benefit when a star appeared ominously in a
1 S.B., xxvii. p. 222. 2 lb., p. 227.
3 Translated by M. E. Chavannes in the Journal of the Peking Oriental Society, vol.
iii. (1890), No. I. 4 L.c, p." 19.

POLITICAL ETHICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 37
wrong constellation. The astronomer informs him : " A calamity threatens
your highness, but it can be diverted upon one of your counsellors." " The
counsellors," said the duke, " are those who direct the State ; to divert the
evil upon them would not be well." " One can divert it towards the
people." " If the people die," said the duke, " over whom shall I reign ?
I had better die alone." " One can divert the evil upon the crops." " If
the year is bad, the people will suffer scarcity and die of hunger. If, being
a prince, I slay my people to save my own life, who would acknowledge
me as prince? My destiny is irrevocable!" The institution was put an
end to by the Han emperor Wen, in 166 B.C. : "The secret supplicator
diverts the course of calamities upon my subjects. I cannot permit it.
Henceforward he is suppressed." x
One expensive religious rite after another 2 was eliminated at the sugges
tion of rationalistic sovereigns or sages, until finally nothing was left but
the imperial act of homage to heaven and earth and agriculture in the
ceremonial ploughing.
The surplus produce from the common fields was regarded as a sort of
national grain bank, and the officers in charge of the stores were allowed
to make advances lo the cultivators at seed-time, to be repaid in harvest.
To the very poor the loans might be made gratuitously,3 and in any case
the repayment had the effect of renewing the stores with fresh grain for old,
while the profit upon some of the advances served to increase the common
fund which could be drawn upon in times of dearth.
The amount of forced labour exacted from the people was intended to
vary under the same circumstances. In good times three days' labour may
be exacted from the cultivators ; but if the harvest is middling, this is re
duced to two days, and if it is bad, to one. If there is a public calamity,
such as an epidemic, all taxation, whether in produce or labour, is
excused. Light taxation, Mencius observes, is indispensable if the objects
1 L.l., p. 39. Cf. Tcheou-li, i. p. 157, on the Niu-tcho or women charged with
intercessory prayers.
2 The character of the archaic religion can be judged from a passage in the same book
of Ssema-tsien (p. 51 of M. Chavannes' version). " Formerly the son of Heaven offered
a sacrifice in the spring to ward off calamities. To Hwang ti he sacrificed an owl and a
tiger ; to the "hidden sheep," a sheep ; to the activity of the horse, a dark-coloured
stallion ; to T'ai i, the prince of Mount Tso and the greatness of earth, an ox ; to the
sages of the Mount Ou i they offered dried fish, and an ox to the ambassador of the Yin and
the Yang." Ssema-tsien quotes an earlier author for the statement that "the spirits
frequent " a given spot because it is a "high place," and the above passage, in which
"the activity of the horse " is mentioned along with the local worship of mountains (else
where associated with that of rivers) may be taken in conjunction with that quoted be
fore (vol. i. p. 148) to show that the worship of animals was not unknown in ancient
China. One of the undoubtedly ancient elements in Chinese religion — the practice of
divining by the tortoise-shell — may not have been peculiar to them. Choo-hi says of it,
" The way of divination by the tortoise was by the application of fire to scorch the
tortoise-shell till the indications appeared on it ; and if such a method of divination was
in use by the Lydians, the occupation of Croesus, on the day when his ambassadors were
to consult the oracles, has a motive, and the happy shot of the Delphic oracle an
explanation. 3 According to a passage in the Li Ki (S.B., xxvii. p. 261), corn is distributed from
the king's vaults to the friendless and destitute in the last month of spring— the time
when the pinch of want is most felt by a purely agricultural community.

38 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
of a sage's government are to be attained, for this is only done when
grain and pulse are made to be as abundant as water and fire, which,
necessary as they are, are yet so plentiful that the poorest can afford to
give them away if a stranger asks for them at nightfall. In his time, three
taxes were levied— one of hempen cloth and silk, one of grain, and one of
personal service. To exact all three at the same time of year was regarded
as an intolerable oppression, as the first ought to be paid in summer, the
second after the autumn harvest, and the third during the winter leisure.1
In the 15th year of Duke Seuen (608-590 B.C.) an additional tithe was
for the first time levied on the village lands,2 either by simply doubling
the proportion of agricultural produce formerly claimed by the State, or
more probably by tithing the valuable produce of the homestead, with its
mulberry and fruit trees, on account of which the personal tax of silk or
cloth was already being paid. The tax was never regarded as lawful, and
when Duke Gae (494-467 b.c) complained of his financial difficulties to a
disciple of Confucius, he was advised to try the effect of tithing the people.
" With two-tenths," said the Duke, " I find them not enough ; how could I
do with that system of a tenth?"3 To which his mentor replies that if
the people have plenty, their prince will not be allowed to want, while it is
an accepted principle that anything beyond a tenth is oppressively heavy.
Cn the other hand, Mencius received with great scorn the suggestion of
a would-be reformer, anxious to go beyond the benevolence of the ancients
and reduce the taxes to a twentieth.4 Such a course might be possible
among the pastoral barbarians of the north, who grow millet only, who
have no fortified cities, no public buildings, no ancestral temples, no sacri
fices, no system of official administration, and no feudal princes requiring
to be entertained with ceremonies and gifts. But for the Middle Kingdom
to banish all these relationships and recognise no degrees of superiority in
mankind was out of the question. Civilization and a tenth seemed pre
ferable to the state of nature and a twentieth.
The following passage from the Li Ki summarizes the most important
and familiar of the fiscal usages of middle antiquity. Anciently the
public fields were cultivated by the united labours of the farmers around
them, from the produce of whose private fields nothing was levied.
Travellers were examined at the different passes, but no duties were levied
from them. A rent was charged for the stances in the market places, but
wares were not taxed. The people went without hindrance, at the proper
seasons, into the forests and plains at the foot of the mountains. None of
the produce was levied from the fields assigned to the younger sons of a
family, nor from the holy fields. Only three days' labour were required (by
the State) from the people in the course of a year. Fields and residences
in the hamlets (when once assigned) could not be sold. Ground set apart
for graves could not be used for any other purpose.5
1 Works, vii. I, xxiii. § 3 and ii. xxvii. - Ch'uu Ts'e:;>, pp. 327-9.
3 Analects, xii. ix. § 3. 4 Works, vi. ii. x.
6 S.B., vol. xxvii. p. 227. According to Choo-hi, if he is not too late to be trusted

POLITICAL ETHICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

39

With regard to other than agricultural produce, the Chow Li explains at
length that the Inspectors of ponds received in kind the skin, horns, pearls,
shells, etc., gathered by the inhabitants and forming their tax : when the
requirements of the treasury are met, the surplus is divided amongst the
people, and the same officer apportions the parts of the marshy ground
which are not under water the whole year, and from which consequently a
crop may be gathered during the summer, as is still done by the Chinese
on the borders of large shallow lakes like the Tung-ting or Poyang waters,
which contract during the dry season. There is also an officer of the
chase, who is in charge of the imperial covers, and who, after the Emperor
has hunted in any district, has power to regulate the admission of the
people to kill game for themselves in the reserve. The same permission
was given in the case of the marshes and rivers, and it was an unpardon
able offence in the "Superintendent of waters," who collected the revenues
from rivers, springs, ponds, and meres, to encroach in any way upon the
rights of the myriads, so as to awaken a feeling of dissatisfaction among
them against the Son of Heaven.1
After a royal hunt the game was scrambled for by the people, and it was
considered bad manners for " the great kitchen " to put in a claim for all
the spoil. According to the Li Ki, three great hunts were held, in spring,
summer, and winter, not in autumn, when it would have interfered with the
harvest — the three objects of the hunt being to provide flesh for sacrifices,
for hospitality, and for the ruler's own use. There were regulations about
the size of the fishing nets to be used,2 the mesh of which was not to be
less than four inches, and it was also forbidden to take fish less than a foot
long. As in the case of the woods and forests, the regulations in force
were mainly directed against the danger of exterminating valuable species ;
and even a royal prince, hunting in spring, is forbidden to surround a
whole marsh for the purposes of a battue. This provision is included
among the "rules of propriety" in the first section of the Li Ki.3 "To
hunt without observing the rules was deemed cruelty towards the creatures
of heaven." It was also against the rule to take eggs, to throw down nests,
and to kill young or pregnant animals ; even the firing of the fields was
supposed to be put off until the insects frequenting them had retired into
the holes and burrows where they were thought to spend the winter. Con
sideration for the brute creation was naturally associated with regard for
the interests of human beings, and so the emperor left some game for the
princes, the princes left some for the great officers, and when these had had
their sport, the common people were allowed to hunt for themselves.
An important commentary of the Sung Dynasty asserts that the woods
for the fact, the ground rent of the market stalls was a genuine rent, levied when the
number of traders applying for space was greater than could be accommodated ; but it
was not considered right to levy both the ground rent and an octroi duty. (Life and
Works of Mencius, by James Legge, D.D., p. 172, n.)
1 Biot, Le Tcheou-li, i. p. 88. S.B., xxvii. p. 220.
2 C.C., vol. ii. p. 6, n.
3 S.B., xxviu p. 106 ; ib. The Royal Regulations/ p. 220,

40 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
and waters were free to all till the Chow Dynasty, and that their produce
was then taxed to prevent too many of the people abandoning agriculture
in favour of what might seem easier and more remunerative modes of life.
The legislator wished to reduce " sport " to an orderly branch of industry,
and it was always counted as an abuse and an indecorum if the Court
amusements threatened to interfere with the humble trade of hunters and
fowlers. By the time of Mencius, however, game preserving had already
reached such a point that the slayer of a deer within the royal park was
punished in the same way as one who had killed a man. Hence the
magnitude of the royal park was a subject of popular discontent,1 though
it was only half the size of that ungrudgingly enjoyed by King Wen, who
allowed the grass-cutters and fuel-gatherers and the catchers of hares and
pheasants to pursue their avocations freely within his enclosure.
Mencius helps to complete our view of the old market regulations by
describing the various abuses which had come into play in his time, and
the reforms which still did not seem hopelessly out of reach. After inform
ing a king of Tse who is ambitious of empire that it is "like climbing a tree
to look for fish " to expect to secure the empire for a small State by war
like preparations, he sums up the functions of the Imperial Government
substantially as they are set forth in the Rites of Chow. A benevolent
government, he tells the king,2 " will cause all the officers in the empire to
wish to stand in your majesty's court, and the farmers all to wish to plough
in your majesty's fields, and the merchants, both travelling and stationary,
all to wish to store their goods in your majesty's market places, and
travelling strangers all to wish to make their tours on your majesty's roads,
and all throughout the empire who feel aggrieved by their rulers to wish
to come and complain to your majesty;" for the people turn to a benevolent
rule as water flows down hill and wild beasts fly to the wilderness ;
they can nO more be kept back from giving their allegiance than the rain
ready to fall from bursting clouds.
One of the signs that foretold the ruin of Tse was that after the duke
had tampered with the grain measures, or in other words, debased the
local currency, a powerful family began to bid for popularity by taking the
opposite course, lending according to their own (large) measures and
accepting payment in the public measure which was deficient ;. and while
the State was absorbing two-thirds of the people's wealth, leaving them
only one-third for food and clothes, this family caused its wood, fish salt,
and frogs to be sold at the same rate in the market as at the water or the
hills, i.e. at cost price : "Though such an one wished not to win them to
himself, how could he help doing so ? " asked the loyal minister of the
doomed State.3
The service of the markets was considered to be in a sense a part of the
public service. A dealer who succeeded in effecting a " corner " in cattle
1 Mencius, Works, i. ii. ii.
2 i. i. vii. § 18.
3 C.C., v. pt. ii. p. 589. The date of the record is 537 B.C.

POLITICAL ETHICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 41
in the State of Loo was treated as a criminal by Confucius, and was said to
have secured immunity in his malpractices only by bribing the officers who
should have denounced his guilt. Yet he is not accused of any action
which would be considered dishonest or even discreditable in the mercan
tile world of the West. He had gradually bought up all the cattle of the
neighbourhood, and all the available pasture land ; whoever wanted to sell,
he was in a position to buy, and by making advances to smaller dealers,
when in difficulties, he had gradually also got them into his power ; and
all the shepherds and herdsmen of the district were in his employment.
Meat was not generally in everyday use ; but on certain festive occasions,
even poor families were required by custom to provide it for their guests,
so that the high price the monopolist was able to charge amounted to a
considerable tax on the whole community. Confucius required him, as a
condition of pardon, to give up the profitable industry and make restitu
tion to the community he had plundered, of all his wealth beyond what
was necessary for a decent maintenance. The cattle dealer consented,
and the point of economic morality was settled once for all in Chinese
opinion.1 A low rate of taxation never ceased to be regarded as an essential part
of good government ; the minister who increased the royal revenue by
increased exactions from the people was denounced ; and to combine low
taxes with a sufficient revenue, it was necessary for the taxpayers to be
numerous. Hence, with brief exceptions, the influence of the Government
was steadily employed to perpetuate the conditions favourable not to the
accumulation, but to the substantially equal distribution of wealth.
1 Pauthier, La Chine, i. p. 156. Mencius, ii. ii. xi. § 7.

CHAPTER IV.
THE RURAL ECONOMY OF THE CHOW.
Like the city of ancient Egypt and Babylonia, the ancient Chinese village
consisted of clustered groups of houses. The traditions embodied in the
Chow Li as to the size and grouping of the clusters are not quite clear or
consistent, but the discrepancies may only reflect the different usages of
the three first dynasties.
The institution of the tsing1 with its nine plots is regarded as the special
creation of the men of Chow. The nine squares cover the area of a square
Li, which contained 900 mow, or nine squares of 100 mow each, of which
the central square (X) formed the public field, [~] [ ] which was culti
vated in common for the benefit of the State. _*._ Throughout the
first three dynasties it was held that taxation L- ' — '— ' could not law
fully exceed a tithe of the produce, and accordingly the area of the public
field was reduced by deducting from it the ground required for the sepa
rate houses and gardens of the eight families, so that the public land was
really 80 mow and the private 820, or rather more, instead of less, than
ten times as much.
The imperial editors say that the character Li is used in three senses :
it means— 1, a group of 25 houses, i.e. the hamlet; 2, a length of 1,800
feet, of which the square forms a tsing ; and 3, a habitation.2 From this
it seems that the term tsing was sometimes used to describe the smallest,
and sometimes the smallest but one, of the groups described in other pas
sages of the Chow Li.3 The rural unit consists for administrative purposes
of a group of five families, which is called a "neighbourhood." Each
family was supposed to include three generations, and to consist normally
of grandfather and grandmother, husband and wife, and three or four
1 Or group with a common well. In the seventeenth century the villages of a tribe in
dim Tartary are described as so many "wells," that being the meaning of the word used
to designate these settlements. (Thevenot, Relations de Divers Voyages, vol. i. p. 14.)
And the antiquity both of the thing and its representation is well shown by the characters
brought together by Mr. Ball (P.S.B.A., 1893, p. 399) in discussing possible origins
lor the Phoenician letter teth. The linear Babylonian character 1  1 tu-1, pit, well,
which the later cuneiform ^>— y reproduces unaltered, except in r I mechanical exe
cution, evidently represents 1^1 the well for irrigation in the centre of a culti
vated enclosure. The early form of the Chinese character I I combines the es
sentials of two Babylonian characters, that for pit, a well, — bi — already given,
and dib, tib 1 — 1 1 =enclosure. The intellectual radical, so to — — — speak, is identi
cal, whether  there is any phonetic connection in this case ' I or no.

z Chinese Classics, ii. p. 7. Giles' Chinese Dictionary, p. 707. Tcheou-li, i. 393
3 i. 337 ft".

THE RURAL ECONOMY OF THE CHOW. 43
children, making seven or eight persons in all, the husband being the
grandfather's eldest son.
The dwellings of the neighbourhood are enclosed by a single wall, and
the residents are bound to mutual aid and support ; but an average group
of forty persons of all ages is manifestly too small to constitute a village,
and -probably rather represents the family community. The present
Chinese average is five persons to a family, counting parents and children
only; but if the family or household here includes three generations, the
family group would certainly include the families of younger sons, and thus
the numbers of the "neighbourhood" would easily be made up. The elder
of the group was responsible for its internal government, and ranked as a
graduate of the lowest class.
The counterpart of this community is the "hamlet" of five neighbour
hoods, including twenty-five families of perhaps about 200 souls. It appears
incidentally from one of the amatory poems of the Shi-King that this larger
group is the one within which public opinion and "the talk of people "
makes itself felt as a social force. A prudent young lady, while avowing
her love for a certain Mr. Chung, begs him not to leap into her hamlet,
breaking the willow trees which grow by its encompassing ditches, for she
fears her parents and their words; she begs him not to leap over the
wall which encloses the dwellings of the neighbourhood, and break the
mulberry trees which it cultivates in common, for she fears the talk of her
" brothers " — -a word often used interchangeably for relatives of the same
surname, or with a common ancestor, in fact the clan or cousinhood ; —
lastly, she begs him not to leap into her garden and break the sandalwood
trees, which are the private property of the family, for she dreads the talk
of the village. That is to say, the opinion of the household, the family
group, and the village are respectively invoked to condemn the lover's in
trusion within the three sets of boundaries, in the inverse order of privacy.1
In the Analects we have an appeal to the same tribunals, for "he whom
the circle of his relatives pronounces to be filial and whom his fellow-vil
lagers and neighbours pronounce to be fraternal"2 is judged to be only
one degree inferior to a worthy officer.
The village system in one form or another is practically of world-wide
extension, but in connection with the hypothesis which brings the Chinese
from the highlands west of Central Asia, it is interesting to note the re
semblance between these clusters of associated households in China and
Wood's description of the communities he found living in the valleys of
Badakshan. It is customary, he tells us, "for relations to live in the
same hamlet, often to the number of six or seven families" (by which no
doubt he understands the natural household of parents and children).
1 C.C., vol. iv. pt. I. Shi-King, p. 125.
2 xiii. 20. The "circle of relatives" is still a reality in China; and when "branch
families" were one of the strongholds of the feudal system, no doubt the political im
portance of remote degrees of relationship caused the records of them to be kept. But
it is also possible that the local .organizations started froin.the natural ramifications of the
family. Cf. Appendix L. . -

44 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
"An outer wall surrounds this little knot of friends, within which each
family has its separate dwelling-house, stable and cattle shed ; and a num
ber of such hamlets forms a kishlak or village." x The kishlak thus answers
exactly to the group of neighbourhoods forming the Chinese hamlet. Two
independent authorities, midway in time between Wood and the Chinese
Book of Odes, note a similar trait in the adjacent kingdoms of Yarkand
and Khotan, where Fa-hian (400 a.d.) and Hiouen-thsang (630 a.d.) speak
in almost identical terms of the people "building their houses in clus
ters." 2
The functions of the village headman who presides over the twenty-five
families of a hamlet, are to keep an account of the numbers of the commu
nity, to apportion the taxes both in produce and labour, and to preside over
the work of seed-time and harvest, for the hamlet is the unit in the system
of common cultivation or "mutual aid," always referred to as an essential
feature of the Chow regime.3 Four of these communities form a Hundred,
or, as M. Biot calls it, a commune, which is presided over by a graduate
of the first rank. He revises the decisions of the local headmen, and is
responsible for the military levies which are proportioned to the agricul
tural divisions. Five hundreds form a shire, or a department, and two
further multiplications by five bring us to the largest administrative dis
tricts, the county and the province.
The solidarity of the hundred extends to the sharing of funeral expenses,
the childless and destitute being interred by their fellow-villagers. The
expenses of religious ceremonies are borne jointly by the county; living
merit is rewarded by honours extending over the whole province, and the
list of persons of special capacity handed in triennially by the governor of
the province is preserved in duplicate by the Recorder of the Interior.
This system is evidently theoretical, and the empire can never have been
mapped out into equal areas counted either by fives or nines. But Men
cius mentions a tradition that " the 50 mow allotment of Hia, the 70 of
Yin, and the 100 of Chow were actually of the same dimensions."4 And in
another section of the Chow Li 5 the divisions after the tsing proceed by
fours, giving groups of 36, 144, and 576 families, which answer roughly to
the 25, 100, and 500 families contemplated by the grouping in hundreds
and shires. So that it is possible that the real usage varied less than the
descriptions of it. Mencius certainly had no access to the official book of
the Rites of Chow, and so can have known only what tradition and sur
viving custom still preserved of them. But he is perhaps all the more
valuable as an authority on that account, and his comment on a proverbial
phrase in honour of the kings Wen and Wu shows that tradition had got a
firm grasp of the number five.
1 A Journey lo the Sources of the Oxus. Capt. John Wood. 2nd ed., 1872, p. 174.
2 Travels of Fa-hian and Sung- Yun, Buddhist Pilgrims from China to India (400 A.D.
and 518 A.D.). Tr. from the Chinese by Samuel Beal, 1869, p. 8.
3 Tchcou-li, i. p. 354.
* Life and Works of Mencius. By James Legge, D.D., 1875, p. 201.
5 i. p. 226.

THE RURAL ECONOMY OF THE CHOW. 45
The saying went, " The Chief of the West knows well how to nourish
the old." According to Mencius, in the good old times which inspired the
proverb " around the homestead, with its five mow, the space beneath the
walls was planted with mulberry trees with which the women nourished
silk-worms, and thus the old were able to have silk to wear. Each family
had five brood hens and two brood sows, and thus the old were able to
have flesh to eat. The husbandmen cultivated their farms of 100 mow,
and thus their families of eight mouths were secure from want. . .
It has never been," concludes the philosopher, "that the ruler of a State
where such results were seen, the old wearing silk and eating flesh, and
the black-haired people suffering neither from hunger nor cold, did not
attain to the imperial dignity." x
Another ode, very short and obscure, and therefore all the more likely
to be old, speaks of the mulberry planters standing about among their ten
acres, to discuss the bad times and talk of abandoning their homes ;2 and
in another place Mencius speaks of the people within the nine squares as
rendering each other all the mutual good offices which are set forth in the
Chow Li as incumbent on the members of the hundred. Though there was
no one strictly universal usage, there was a perfectly well known and
familiar type of usage, any decently close approximation to which was ac
cepted as lawful and satisfactory, just as the expression "a hamlet of ten
families " was used proverbially 3 for the smallest centre of social life.
One point is significant in connection with what we know of communal
cultivation elsewhere. The moiv as a measure of land represents a rect
angular strip of 240 pou in length by one in breadth, i.e. just such a fur
row-long as was used to divide the ploughlands of western Europe. The
allowance of land to each village group was supplemented by pasture and
the various rights of common allowed upon the hills and wastes, and this
allowance of both pasture and arable land was doubled or trebled if the
arable land was of inferior quality. Enclosures were forbidden on the hill
pastures, but the allowance was never less than the arable, i.e. at the rate
of from 100 to 300 mow to each household. Perhaps the simplest view is
to suppose that, as long at least as land was plentiful, the hamlet occupied
about as much land as it wanted, and divided its settlement into nine
squares, taking the actual size of the squares for granted, as in the case
of other conventional measures, and calling the enclosure always by the
same name as long as it occupied the same place in the district administra
tion. Whatever its acreage and numerical strength, the enclosed hamlet
tilled in common, by the system of mutual aid, fields enough to provide
food and clothing in simple abundance for old and young.
Chinese criticism is so far to be trusted that we may .probably accept a
song, supposed to have been sung by the peasants in the age of Yao, as
one of the earliest remains of popular poetry. They sing as they work : —
1 Mencius, iv. i. 13 ; vii. i. 22. 2 C.C., iv. ii. p. 169.
3 Legge, i. p. 47. De Mailla, iii. p. 30.

46 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
" We rise at sunrise,
We rest at sunset,
Dig wells and drink,
Till our fields and eat —
What is the strength of the Emperor to us ? " '
For 4,000 years the strength of the empire has been in the agricultural
peasantry, who ask nothing from the emperor but to be let wisely alone.
Pictures more or less circumstantial and poetical of the life of the rural
communes are to be met with in the Book of Odes. One of the many
poems attributed to the Duke of Chow is a sort of poetical almanack, con
sisting apparently of several sets of weather verses welded into one ; but
parts of it at least must be older than the duke, as the seasons followed
are those of Hia, the first historical dynasty. It is called an ode of Pin,
and, as there is nothing in the text to cause the name to be invented, it is
probably traditional, and therefore shows at least that the descriptions of
the poem were originally supposed to refer to the settlements in Pin rather
than Chow, /..;. to life in China before 1335 B.C.
The ode begins with the seventh month, in which "the fire-star passes
the horizon ; " it answers to our August, and owes its place to the fact that
in the days of Yao this occurred at midsummer. There are eight stanzas,
each of which runs through the various occupations, productions, and
characteristics of the various months in turn. The first month is cold,
they go after badgers, and take foxes and wild cats to make furs for the
young princes. In the second they hunt and drill, the people take the
boars of one year, those of three years are for the prince; they hew out
the ice with harmonious blows ; in the third month they convey it to the
ice-houses,2 and they take their ploughs in hand. In the fourth month
they take their way to the fields; the small grass is in seed; the sacrifice
of a lamb is offered before the ice-houses are opened for use. In the fifth
month the cicada gives out its note, and the locust moves its legs ; in
the sixth the spinner sounds its wings, they eat the sparrow plums and
grapes ; in the seventh month the shrike is heard, the cricket is in the
field, they cook the kwei and pulse, and eat the melons. In the eighth
month are the sedges and reeds; the women begin to spin the silk, the
dark, the yellow, and the brilliant red, for the lower garments of the young
princes ; they reap, they knock down the dates, they cut the bottle-gourds ;
the crickets gather under the eaves. In the ninth month it is cold with
frost, clothes and garments of hair are given out for winter use, and space
is cleared in the vegetable garden for the stacks of wood and grain ; they
1 C.C., iv. Shi-King, Prolegomena, p. 13.
2 The general use of ice at so early a date in the temperate, wheat-growing plains of
Northern China, seems to call for explanation. The custom may have been borrowed
from the oases of Central Asia, where the summer heat is only rendered bearable by the
free use of snow and ice in cooling drinks. Burnes speaks of the abundance of ice as one
of the great luxuries of Bokhara, adding that it is pitted in winter, and sold at a price
within the reach of all, even the beggars drinking iced water. In China the possession
of an ice-house was a sign of wealth. (The Great Learning, x. 22.) Canadian colonists
store the winter ice, in sawdust from their lumber-mills, to mitigate the summer heats.

THE RURAL ECONOMY OF THE CHOW. 47
gather the hempseed. In the tenth month the leaves fall, the crickets
enter under the bed, windows and crevices are closed, they reap the rice,
and make spirits of it for the aged ; ihey convey the sheaves to the clearing
ready swept in the homestead, with the millet, early and late, the hemp,
pulse, and wheat, and every other grain.
The harvest home ends with simple feasts and sacrifices, and songs with
the innocent burden, " Oh, my husbandmen, the harvest is all collected,
let us go to the town, and be at work on our houses j"1 for in the two
winter months, which might pass for holiday, when no out-door avocations
are described, the diligent people are still busy, gathering grass by day, and
twisting ropes of it at night, to mend their roofs before the season of sowing
comes round again. An ode of the 9th century might pass for a subdued
Chinese Christmas carol. " The cricket is in the hall, and our carts stand
unemployed ; the year is passing away. If we do not enjoy ourselves now,
the days and months will have gone." 2
The " silkworm month " is so styled because the date of the different
processes is more liable to vary with the season than the ordinary farming
operations. In the spring days, when warmth begins and the oriole utters
its song, the young women take their baskets and go along the narrow
paths between the mulberry trees, gathering the tender leaves of the young
trees, and stripping the branches, while the young men lop off with axes
and hatchets those that are out of reach.
Other passages in the odes and the Chow Li confirm and complete
this picture of orderly rural life. The sweeping and levelling a place 3
within the private homestead for the grain stacks was not merely an epoch
in the work of the farm, it marked the period when the military forces
might be assembled, and the chariots of war passed in review and
manoeuvred, because the fields were clear of crops.4 After this, in winter,
traps and pitfalls were dug for wild animals, and sometimes set with spring-
bows; rabbit nets were set in the woods where nine paths meet; but all
holes and ditches were required to be filled up before the summer, to
guard against accidents among the cultivators. At the end of the autumn
the reeds and withered branches and weeds were cut and burnt for charcoal,
which was used as a disinfectant and insecticide, as well as for fuel.
It was lawful to burn the woods and herbage in the vicinity of an
imperial cover, or when it was desired to clear the ground for cultivation,
but this was only permitted early in the year, no doubt for fear of loss from
prairie fires. At a prescribed time of year, in spring and autumn, a special
officer performed the rite of "taking the fire out of doors" and bringing it
in again, which probably announced the time when the cultivators should
leave their houses for the fields, and when they should return home for the
1 C.C., iv. Shi-King, p. 232.
2 lb., p. 175.
3 The Jesuit Father who accompanied Kang-hi on his hunting tour in Mongolia, illus
trated the completeness of the preparations made along the route by saying the road was
made as smooth and clean as the'swept clearing for the grain crops.
4 Tcheou-li, ii. p. 175.

48 OWNERSHLP IN CHINA.
winter.1 A penalty was inflicted on the townspeople who " lose fire " — or
let it go out by inadvertence, when the villagers are gone afield : a regulation
which takes us back, if not to the very origins of civilization, at least to
traditions derived from them.2 It is specified that in summer, after "putting
out the fire," clothes must be dried in the air, and the precautions to be
taken in the army against conflagrations are also laid down. The art of
obtaining fire by friction was still practised when Confucius wrote, and
different woods were to be used for this purpose in different seasons.
The work upon the public and the private fields seems to have been done
in the same way by joint labour, at least at seed-time and harvest, though
the crops of each square were probably garnered separately, as nothing is
said about the principle on which they were divided. One of the sacrificial
odes of the Chow Dynasty gives a graphic description of the work of the
associated farmers ; it is said to be the one used at the solemn ceremony in
the spring, when the Emperor worships Heaven and Earth, and turns a
furrow with his plough. The laconic verses begin with the clearing of the
ground from grass and bushes ; two and two the labourers clear away the
roots (a phrase which shows that the Chinese were still continually reclaiming
unfilled jungle for the plough). The whole family is there to the third
generation, loving husbands and modest wives. For the six summer
months they live in huts on the south-lying acres, and the village is
deserted by the working population, as the families of Swiss cultivators
migrate bodily with their cattle to the Alps for the summer months. The
old folks and women bring out their food ; masters and servants feast
together, and the noise of their eating resounds cheerily.3 The surplus of
the old stores of grain is brought out to feed the husbandmen. Having
selected the seed, and looked after the implements, the various grain is
sown, the blade rises in even lines; gourds are trained along the bounding
divisions; troops of weeders go amongst the furrows; the insects that
attack each part of the plant are carefully removed, not without appropriate
imprecations : —
" May the spirit, the father of husbandry,
Lay hold of them, and put them in the blazing fire ! " ''
But all the cultivators' labour will be wasted unless the fertilizing showers
fall from heaven; they gaze anxiously at the skies, but even in their prayers
give the first place to the interests of the common weal :—
1 A Chinese Diogenes mentioned by Chuang-tze, refuses to take office, saying, " I have
fifty acres of land beyond the city walls, which are enough to supply me with food. Ten
more within the walls supply me with clothes : " an exact counterpart to the Egyptian and
Babylonian classification of property in ' ' town and country. " The philosopher is poor so
the measures are small. (Chuang-tzu, Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer, translated
from the Chinese by Herbert A. Giles, 1889, p. 379.)
2 Tcheou-li, ii. pp. 195, 381. The very archaic folk tales of Lithuania reproduce a
similar incident, involving the necessity of sending to a distance to beg or borrow a light
3 Western travellers use a different epithet to describe this peculiarity, which like so
much else in China, has at least the merit of antiquity.
4 C.C., iv. pt. ii. p. 381.

THE RURAL ECONOMY OF THE CHOW- 49
'- The clouds form in dense masses,
And the rain comes down slowly.
May it rain first on our public fields, and then on our private." '
Then comes harvest time, with its multitudes of reapers, and fresh stacks
of grain to be piled up in granaries, for sacrifices and ceremonies, and the
comfort of the aged, while the " hundred houses " of the village 2 open to
receive their share of grain. One of the most interesting of the Odes closes
with an impressive recognition of the long endurance of these good gifts :
" It is not here only that there is this — it is not now only that there is such
a time: — from of old it has been thus!"3 And so it is still, to the
admiration of every Western traveller, 3,000 years or so after the composi
tion of this pious and large-minded hymn of thanksgiving.
Meanwhile the surveyor of the fields looks on well pleased, and his officers
have nothing to do but to see that all are provided with the implements
of husbandry, and that the new fields and fallows receive their proper
treatment as well as the old arable land. Besides the regular cultivation of
the fields there are enclosures for the breeding and cultivation of fish for
food, and the wild fowl of the marshes are regarded as the source of a
regular food supply, so that if the scenery of the Chinese odes could be
translated into a series of wall pictures we should have an almost exact
counterpart to the surviving representations of the rural economy of Egypt.
Only in one respect is there a marked difference.
As an instrument of government, the bamboo plays quite as large a
part in ancient and modern China as the courbash or stick in Egypt ; but
unlike the Egyptian, the Chinaman does not work under the stick. In
both countries food is abundant, and the means of subsistence as a rule
easily obtained, and in both it was regarded as a part of the duty of Govern
ment to provide stores of grain for the relief of the people in years of
scarcity. But in China forced labour was the exception, not the rule.
The soldier was a reluctant conscript, not a mercenary or a volunteer, but
the hardships of a military campaign were felt all the more because the
experience was infrequent; and the occasional employment of forced labour
for a specific purpose, such as the walling of a town, the repairing an em
bankment, or even embellishing an officer's residence, partook more of
the nature of taxation than servitude. In China 4,000 years ago, as now,
the common people employed themselves, and as a natural consequence
formed a standard of comfort fully equal to that reached under the rule of
the most liberal and benignant masters. At the same time, a customary
standard of economic independence was also set up, in the strength of
which the threatened encroachments of feudalism were successfully defied.
In one section of the Li Ki the salaries of different officials and the
rulers of the feudal States are calculated in terms of an agriculturist's
1 This is one of the famous bits of Chinese verse, a stock quotation to illustrate the
virtues of antiquity.
2 I.e. the commune of four hamlets of twenty-five houses.
3 C.C., iv. pf. ii. p. 603.
VOL. II. — P.C. E

5o OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
wages. The cultivator's portion of 100 mow is here stated to suffice, ac
cording to the quality of the land, for the support of so many individuals,
ranging from five to nine. The salary of the lowest officer is equal to that
of a husbandman on the most fruitful soil, and represents the food of nine
persons : a great officer has wherewithal to feed seventy-two individuals ;
a minister can feed 288, and the ruler ten times the latter number, i.e.
2,88c1 As official salaries were to a great extent paid in kind,, this
arrangement was probably not an imaginary one. Translated into cash,
it would mean that if the peasant earned the equivalent of dd. a day,
the great officer would receive about ,£650 a year, a minister about
^2,600, while the ruler of the State received about ^26,000. The very
fact that all salaries were calculated at the rate of so many days' rations
would tend to check any inclination to underestimate the amount of that
unit. , The Chinese cultivator had no master with the right or power of forcing
him to labour against his will, but the law did something to encourage
industry by taxing indolence. The cultivator was legally entitled to do
as he pleased with his own lot, but fiscal pressure was exercised to
ensure its not being neglected. If the ground of the homestead is left
"bald," that is, not sown with hemp or planted with mulberry trees, the
owner has to pay a money tax equal to the tithe on the same extent of
arable land ; if the arable land is not cultivated, grain equivalent to the
taxes of three families 2 is exacted from the delinquent ; and persons of
no occupation pay a poll tax equivalent to the sum paid by a householder.
In the later history of China, so many deliberate attempts were made to
check the growth of large estates and a landless class that it is quite pos
sible these stringent provisions may have been directed, not only against
idleness among the peasants, but also against the ownership of land by
any person not actively engaged in its cultivation. In any case it tends
to show that ownership and occupation went normally together, and that
the occupier who did not cultivate his holding was accountable to the
State for the omission. As in Egypt, houses in the capital were not taxed,
as the imperial editors say, because there was no vacant ground to be
sown or planted. The only districts taxed to the amount of five-twentieths
of the produce were the woods and marshes, which do not owe their value
to human labour, and were consequently regarded as a legitimate source
of revenue for the State, like the natural pasture of Egyptian wastes.
The conclusion of the section on taxes in the Chow Li is understood by
M. Biot and the Chinese commentators as assigning further penalties of
a sumptuary sort to the neglect of the labours of agriculture. But it is more
in accordance with the spirit of Chinese ethics to see in the passage a
solemn statement of facts, a record of the eternal necessities, by which
certain causes entail with automatic justice appropriate effects, against
which it is the part of a wise Government to give its subjects timely warn-
1 S.B., iii. p. 210. 2 Biot's Tcheou-li, i. 279, n. 4.

THE RURAL ECONOMY OF THE CHOW. 5t
ing. " In general," it is said, " those amongst the people who do not rear
cattle cannot offer animals in sacrifice ; those who do not cultivate their
plots of land cannot sacrifice grain ; those who do not plant their orchards
cannot have a complete coffin with external case ; those who do not rear
silkworms cannot wear robes of silk, and those who do not spin cannot
wear a complete suit of mourning with an under-garment." x
The force of these particular deterrents may seem unequal, but the poli
tical wisdom of the Chinese legislator shows itself in observing and drawing
attention to those natural sanctions, which enforce the precepts accepted
by the national conscience, rather than by direct legislative interference.
Mencius' enumeration of the consequences of good administration is con
ceived in the same spirit. " If the seasons of husbandry be not interfered
with, the grain will be more than can be eaten. If close nets are not
allowed to enter the pools and ponds, the fishes and turtles will be more
than can be consumed. If the axes and bills enter the hills and forests
(only) at the proper time, the wood will be more than can be used. When
the grain and fish and turtles are more than can be eaten, and there is
more wood than can be used, this enables the people to nourish their
living and bury their dead without any feelings against any one,"8 which
is the first step in the way of royal government.
It would be easy to multiply examples of this keenly rationalistic appre
ciation of natural sequences. When Duke He of Loo, in the 7th century
B.C., wished, in consequence of a long drought, to burn (or expose in the
sun) a suspected witch and an emaciated person, the sagacious minister of
the moment advised him that this was not the proper course : " Put your
walls, the inner and the outer, in good repair, lessen your food ; be sparing
in all your expenditure. Be in earnest to be economical, and encourage
people to help one another. What have the witch and the emaciated
person got to do with the matter ? " 3
On the other hand, to cut down trees upon a hill as part of a sacrifice
for rain is punished as the greatest of crimes, which is Chinese for a
blunder.4 Notwithstanding the clearances effected by successive heroes,
the hills of China were not yet stripped of their natural forests, and these
were administered by a special officer. Certain kinds of trees were re
served ; but even in the plantations of the State, the public were admitted
to cut for themselves under prescribed regulations for a limited number of
days during the year. In cases of public necessity (as to procure coffins °
or make an embankment) trees might be felled at irregular times, but
otherwise the common people were restricted to one lopping season for
each kind of wood. A passage in Mencius shows incidentally how the
fatal process of denudation went on, when no longer controlled by a strong
1 Tcheou-li, i. p. 282. 2 Works, i. i. iii. § 3.
3 Legge, Chinese Classics, ii. 6. 4 lb., v. 663.
0 In the Welsh laws of Howel there is a somewhat similar provision: "There are
three trees which are free to be cut in the king's forest : timber for the roof of a church -y
for spear shafts for the king's use, and wood for a bier."

52 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
and watchful Government. He illustrates the possibility of men losing the
virtues which are natural to them, by the loss of natural beauty undergone
by the mountains on the east of Tse (near the present Tsing-chow). Being
on the borders of a large State, the trees were hewn down with axes and
bills, and when new buds and sprouts sprang up from the roots, cattle and
goats came and browsed upon them, so that the once finely wooded moun
tains appeared bare and stript— as man becomes vicious when evil circum
stances trample down all his good impulses and inclinations.1
Some measure of the length of time during which China has had a civil
ized history is given by the fact that the more enlightened provisions of
the Chow Li were made the subject of quite modern sounding comments
in what Europe calls the Middle Ages. Towards the time when England
was suffering from the afforesting of whole counties under the Norman
conqueror, one of the Sung commentators on the Chow code combined
his admiration for the liberality of the ancient monarchs — who divided the
produce of the woods, mountains, and watercourses with their subjects —
with remarks on the necessity of regulating the human greed for profit,
which ends by exterminating the sources of wealth, unless the State inter
venes for the protection of natural species by imposing a close time. Ex
clusive devotion to agriculture has led in China to the neglect of wood
craft, but the destruction of forests which goes on in countries colonized
by Englishmen has not that excuse; it is simply that our political philo
sophy allows to the private proprietor license which the political philosophy
of ancient China denied to princes.
The regulations still in force respecting the pasturing of the imperial
herds 2 differ little from those set forth in the Chow Li. Under the head
ing which describes the functions of the " valuer of horses," it is said : " In
general when an officer of state receives a horse from the hands of his
chiefs, he writes down the age and colour and price of the horse. If the
animal dies within ten days, it must be paid for in full. If it dies after ten
days, the ear is given as a proof; the payment is made with the body.
Beyond that term there is no reclaiming." 3 From this it appears that the
" boarding-out " of the royal cattle, which reappears in the Irish laws as
the " giving and taking of stock," was an ancient Chinese institution, not
invented or introduced by the present Mantchu dynasty.
As in ancient Egypt, the charge was not converted into a burden or
treated as a source of revenue, and the keeper of the herds was not bound
to make good losses for which he was not responsible. It was also the
duty of the royal herdsmen to provide the six species of animals used for
sacrifices— the ox, the horse, sheep, pig, dog, and pheasant. All animals for
sacrifice were required to be of a uniform colour, and without spot or blemish ;
but the commentators observe that the difficulty of observing this rule had
caused it to be relaxed. It is possible that Sumerian scholars may find in
1 Works, vi. i. viii. § 2. 2 Post, p. 373.
3 Tcheou-li, ii. p. 189.

THE RURAL ECONOMY OF THE CHOW. 53
the provisions on this subject some trace of kinship with the sacrificial
usages of ancient Babylonia. At present this and other equally inviting
lines of inquiry have not been followed up, on account of the difficulty of
finding a scholar interested at once in the subject matter of both classes
of texts, and master enough of both archaic languages not to be misled by
accidental or superficial resemblance.

CHAPTER V.
INDUSTRY AND TRADE IN THE MIDDLE ANTIQUITY OF CHINA.
In the first book of the Chow Li, which describes the administration
of the Imperial court and the branches of government, nine classes or
occupations of the people are recognised by the legislator. The first class
of course is that of the cultivators — the men of the hills, the plains, and
the marshes, who produce the nine kinds of grain. Then follow (2)
The gardeners. (3) Wood and watermen. (4) The herdsmen of the cul
tivated marshes, who look to the breeding of the beasts and herds native
to them. (5) The artisans of a hundred trades, by whom the eight sorts
of raw material are manufactured, i.e. the workers in stone, wood, metal,
jade, ivory, pearls, skins, and feathers. (6) Shopkeepers and wandering
dealers or pedlars. (7) Lawful wives, by whose labour silk and flax are
wrought into cloths. (8) Servants of both sexes, including the inferior
wives who are employed in domestic services. (9) Individuals without
fixed profession, who change their occupation from time to time, in whom
a commentator at the beginning of our era recognised the counterpart of
the wage-earning class of his own time.1
In the section of the Shoo King called the Officers of Chow, four
classes are mentioned : the scholars or officers, the cultivators, the
mechanics, and the merchants or traders ; a classification chiefly remark
able for its omission of a noble or military caste. This is the classifica
tion referred to in the Thsi-yu, when it is said : " The sons of officers ought
always to be officers ; the sons of artisans ought always to be artisans ; the
sons of merchants ought always to be merchants, and the sons of agricul
turists ought always to be agriculturists." 2 The Tso Chuen tells of a
prisoner from Tsoo, in the sixth century, who, when questioned by the
marquis of Tsin about his family, replied, " We are musicians ; " and when
asked if he could play : " Music," said he, "was the profession of my father;
dared I learn any other?" According to tradition, a certain quarter was
assigned anciently in Chinese towns and cities for mechanics, and all of
one art were required to have their shops together. The son followed the
father's profession, and it was supposed that, seeing nothing else around
him, he would think of nothing else, and so become the more proficient3
1 Tcheou-li, i. pp. 26, 27.
2 Cf. Tcheou-li, i. p. 198.
3 Legge, ii. p. 206. Marco Polo was given to understand, in the same way, that the
twelve great trade guilds of Hang-chu-fu (his Quinsay) had each their own district, and

INDUSTRY AND TRADE. S5
A certain number of the offices described in the Chow Li are also charac
terized as hereditary ; especially such as might reasonably be supposed to
require hereditary skill, like the snarers of birds, and the tamers of wild
beasts, or inherited knowledge of minute forms and ceremonies, such as
those appropriate to the reception of foreign guests. In another passage
mention is made of " hereditary professions," which are explained to be
those referring to magic, medicine,1 and divination.
With these exceptions, the oldest and the ruling idea with the Chinese
is that office should not be hereditary, but that ordinary employment
should be so. Mencius quotes as one of the maxims accepted by a con
federacy under one of the Chiefs of the Presiding States : " Let not offices
be hereditary, nor let officers be pluralists." 3 The primd facie right of the
eldest son of the king's lawful wife to inherit the throne was asserted less in
the interest of the heir than of the Government, which would be distracted by
the intrigues of rival pretenders, and endangered if the king were induced
weakly to listen to the favourite of the moment, pleading for her own
children. Functions or obligations might be hereditary, but inherited privi
leges were equally dangerous to the giver and the recipient. There was
no feeling about the right of children to inherit, or the duty of parents
to bequeath, wealth. A story is told of a retired statesman in the ist
century B.C., who was reproached with spending his acquired wealth so
lavishly that none was likely to be left for his sons ; and he defended his
conduct on the ground that it would be injurious to the latter to inherit
the means of living in luxury without industry.3
As in Egypt the position of the scribe was open to the ambition of
every class, so in China the lower offices of State were open to all, and
promotion by merit was, in theory at least, an essential part of the con
stitution. So far as the common people were concerned, each adult was registered
as following some lawful pursuit — as a matter of course that of his father,
unless otherwise stated ; if he ceased to follow that calling without being
enrolled in any other, the presumption would be that he was an idler,
seeking to evade the payment of his lawful tax, and so obnoxious to the
police. But changes of occupation in the case of individuals would be
discouraged by the mere fact of their having to be reported, while the
Government would consider any large displacement of industry as matter
for regulation, so as to prevent any disturbance of the existing social
order such as would be caused, e.g. by the desertion of agriculturists taking
to sport or traders abandoning commerce for domestic industries. The
migration of households or individuals was recognised as a normal incident.
The persons quitting a "neighbourhood" received a pass or permit from
were strictly hereditary, even the rich being compelled to follow their father's calling to
the exclusion of any other.
1 According to the rules of propriety, "The physic of a. doctor, in whose family)
medicine has not been practised for three generations, should not be taken."
2 Works, vi. ii. vii. § 3.
8 Giles' Gems of Chinese Literature, p. 97.

56 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
the elder whose jurisdiction they were leaving; and unless distance forbade,
they were introduced by him in person to their new chiefs.1
The provisions regarding internal commerce and markets 2 are as full
and elaborate as those respecting agriculture. The duties of the provost
of the market are singularly extensive. They include, of course, the
regulation of weights and measures, the maintenance of order— by the
help of a rod, made of the standard measure,— and the punishment of
theft, fraud, or adulteration, if the proportion of the inferior article ex
ceeded 20 per cent. ; 3 the levying of the octroi duties on the goods brought
in and taken out for sale; and when, in case of plague or famine, the duties
were remitted, he had still to keep an account of the goods that passed
the barrier. But besides all this, the officers of the market were required
to regulate and equalize the quantity and prices of the goods offered for
sale, as the superintendents of agriculture were required to regulate the
cultivation of the ground and equalize the burdens of the cultivators ; and
the legislator evidently regards one task as no more arduous than the
other. According to Ma-twan-lin, the system of State purchases was not primi
tive, and the official "purchase of grain at a fair price," as it was called,
was only introduced in the 7th century B.C. This was followed by "the
sale of grain at a fixed price," and the establishment of granaries to
supply the sale. It was argued that if the State began to sell grain at a
moderate price in times of scarcity, private dealers would be driven to
lower their prices, by the fear of not disposing of their stocks, and the
idea is economically speaking in advance of the mere attempt to fix the
price of corn by edict. But, like most well-meant experiments in the way
of State trading, this ended by opening the door to fresh abuses. The
State was tempted by the near view of the profits of commerce to make
its benevolent granaries a source of revenue ; and when once the sale of
corn had been carried on for the sake of profit, arbitrary measures be
came necessary to secure a sufficient supply for sale, and the demand on
individuals to furnish a given quantity of grain, irrespective of the market
price, became in time a serious tax.
But the Government was not content with trying to lower prices when
abnormally high, it also aimed at preventing the depreciation of prices
in times of exceptional abundance ; and with remarkable financial enter
prise, it undertook to buy from the traders when goods were plentiful as
well as to sell to the public when commodities were scarce. It was the
business of the officer in charge to attract dealers by preventing a fall of
prices below remunerative rates, and to attract customers by a constant
supply of provisions at uniform prices. If any commodity became, for a
season, a drug in the market, the profit was reserved to the State, which
alone could afford to buy up goods on speculation at an advance upon the
current market rate ; and the profit secured by its ultimate sale was thus
1 Tcheou-li, i. pp. 241, 259, 260. 2 lb., pp. 309-336.
a Jb., p. 315.

INDUSTRY AND TRADE. 57
secured to the community instead of being scrambled for by Commercial
speculation. In the same way, if curiosities or valuables of any kind hung
long on hand, they were purchased on account of the treasury and re
served until there was a demand for them.
In the code of laws now in force it is specified that if the Government
requires any material for State use, the commissioners and the prefects and
district magistrates shall consult and apportion the contribution, and
¦decide whether it shall be levied in kind or purchased in the market,
" having regard to whether it is a time of great plenty or the reverse."1
With the same object, money is to be coined in a time of scarcity, to en
able the people to buy necessaries; and, though this expedient may seem
more well meant than scientific, it might be resorted to occasionally with
out perceptible damage, if the State continued its purchases at the old rate
on a large enough scale to prevent a nominal fall of price. An early
commentator admires the wisdom of this device on the ground that gold
and copper, which are always valuable, are not subject to the uncertainties
of the seasons.
Ma-twan-lin says of the duties of the Chow treasurer that his operations
are analogous to those of the officers of later dynasties who are charged to
regulate the price of commodities by the purchases and sales which they
effect in the name of the State. And Yang-chi 2 describes him as benefit
ing the merchants by buying their unsold stock without trying to profit by
its low price, and benefiting buyers by allowing them the advantage of
purchases made in the favourable season ; but it is evident that this sort of
commercial administration could only be practised, on a comparatively
small scale, when the services of the ablest and most disinterested states
men were not pre-engaged with matters of larger imperial concern.
Traditions current in the 7th century B.C. claim for Yu and Tang the
casting of metallic money for the relief of the people ; but metal was
bartered by weight before any approach was made to a currency. The
annals of the first Han (206 B.c-25 a.d.) give an account of the mone
tary arrangements of the nth century B.C., which, though not very intelli
gible, is probably founded on authentic materials. According to this, gold
was moulded in cubes weighing 1 kin, and bronze money was round or
" tongue-like," and its weight estimated in tchus. M. Terrien de la Cou
perie estimates the tchu at 4-06 grains, and the kin or gold unit at 1,950
grains, i.e. one-fourth of the hwan, the royal standard of 7,800 grains (about
505 gram.), which is identifiable with the light Babylonian talent.3 M.
1 China Review, vol. viii. p. 359, G. Jamieson. Translations from ll\e- Lu-li, or
General Code of Laws.
2 Post, pp. 202-5.
3 ' Catalogue of Chinese Coins from the Tlh century B.C. to A.D. 621, by Terrien de la
Couperie. Nearly all the following particulars are derived from this valuable work.
The mere coincidence of size between any two weights, large or small, gives, however,
by itself, little presumption in favour of a common origin, because most systems have one
large and one small weight — or coin — serving nearly similar purposes among their various
adherents. To be convincing, the resemblance must extend to the various sub-divisions,
and the relations of coins, weights, and measures, to each other.

58 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
Biot, the only other writer who has dealt with the subject, estimated the
kin at one-third of the hwan.
Ma-twan-lin's authorities speak of barter as followed by the use of shells,
to which, under the Hia and Shang dynasties, three metals, yellow,' white,
and red, were added. Ssema-tsien understands by these gold, silver, and
copper, though one of his commentators supposes the red metal to be iron.
In 554 B.C. a large copper money was issued, as appears from the text of a
remonstrance addressed to the king describing the practice of his prede
cessors, who issued two sizes of coins, called the Mother and the Son, of
different sizes, according to the needs of the people. Subsequently a
prince of Tsoo attempted to give the value of the large coins to the small
ones, with the result that merchants deserted his markets.1
A very interesting book of the Shoo King,2 which is the foundation stone
of the Chinese penal code, is assigned by Dr. Legge to the ioth century
B.C. In this the system of pecuniary commutation of penalties is applied
to various offences, the fines ranging from 600 to 6,000 "ounces" in Dr.
Legge's translation ; " rings " according to Mr. Terrien de la Couperie, —
copper in each case being of course understood. The oldest existing money
is certainly in the form of rings, without any inscription, and no other is
known to have been used till the introduction, early in the 7th century, of
metal knives as a currency. Large bronze knives of regular weight, with a
rude inscription, were also circulated by traders in S. Shantung, serving,
like the earliest pi-tchan or spade-money, both for use and exchange.
" Hoes and riches," " hoes and cloth," are general terms for wealth.
Hwan, prince of Tse, the first of the " presiding States," attempted to
regulate the weight of the metallic currency, and had spade money cast
from native mines ; he also issued knife-coins of practical shape and size,
bearing the important inscription, " returnable-reviving currency of Tse,"
and on the reverse " 30 units " and " yuen '' — a ring, doubtless an allusion
to the old metal rings. Other early inscriptions are "exchangeable,"
"return," "work," "sprout," "star," "family," and " currency of Tsih-moh
city." Two things are very remarkable. Coins of all kinds were issued
during the feudal period by individual merchants, trading firms, guilds and
private families, as well as by cities. And the legends of all seem to show
that, like the first issues of paper money many centuries later, the coin was
put forward rather as a bond — something returnable, a promise to pay
value to such an amount — than as a mere medium of exchange for uni
versal currency.
About the middle of the 7th century the old ring-money of Chow
began to be inscribed and became a coinage, but this use for metal is still
only third or fourth in importance. About the same time one feudal
prince, in giving a present of metal to another, stipulated that it was not to-
be used for making weapons ; and accordingly the recipient cast three
bells with it — a more respectful way of using it than for tools. In the next
1 Joitrn. As., 3me serie, iii. p. 434.
2 The Marquis of Lu on Punishments, S.B., iii. pp. 254-264.

INDUSTRY AND TRADE. 59
century a prince of Tsin refused to accept a ransom paid in coin, and
demanded silk. Small bean-shaped coins, called metallic cowries, were
issued about 600 B.C., and a little later we have large knife coins issued by
traders' monetary unions, and bearing the inscription : " Returnable-re
viving currency of all travelling traders of Tsi and Kwang-tching " (Shensi).
Another knife-coin issued by the same class is singular in having a well-
executed figure, as well as characters, inscribed on it ; a lad bearing a flag
appears as a sort of rebus for the word " to travel."
In 523 a king of Chow issued coins of four times the customary weight;
but they were not accepted by the people, so the old type of flat rings was
reverted to. Spade-money was in use for at least three hundred years from
the 7th to the 4th century, and for half that time it was the common
currency. The spades had hollow handles so as to be useable, and, being
really intended more for tools than coins, were only roughly inscribed.
The knife-money was confined to the Shantung peninsula and its neigh
bourhood. About the middle of the 5th century we hear of three Boards
of Finance being established in Yueh by the help of the king of Tsoo, for
the currency of gems, gold, and coins and silk ; coins, i.e. metal, and silk
being bracketed together as utilities, apart from such merely precious
things as gold and gems.
In 423 a prince of Wei is said to have stimulated the use of metallic
currency by State purchases, which shows that the mass of the people still
did not feel the need of a currency for every-day affairs. Many coins bear
the names of two towns — doubtless those that had a common market ; and
the relative position of towns in the larger monetary unions indicates the
lines of old trade routes. Ping-chow, in the State of Tsin, was the centre
of four monetary unions. Coins were issued by such unions from 580 to
380 b.c ; but towards the close of the " Warring States " period, trade as
well as everything else suffered.
Other forms of coin were called weight-money, or "riding-money," from
the resemblance of its shape to a saddle ; and pu-money, in use from the
6th tb the 3rd century B.C., but confined to the triangle bounded on the
west and south by the Yellow River. The name is translated " extended,"
and the coin has been taken to represent a cloth or garment ; it consisted
of a piece of flat, inscribed metal, not unlike a spade with an indentation
at the bottom, and was more of a mere coin than either spades, knives, or
the rings, which were a survival from the time when metal for general use
was cast in that shape for convenience in porterage or storing. Down to
the 4th century unwrought metal continued to be used for purposes of ex
change, but in the 5th small spade and pu-money, of no intrinsic use, were
also circulated. The knife-money, as it approaches to a token, has less
and less blade, in proportion to the round perforated handle by which it
could be strung ; but the modern cash is descended from the still older
ring-money, not from a knife with completely atrophied blade.
The frequent issues of money by towns seems to imply that municipal
independence advanced during the feudal period in China exactly as was

<<5o OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
the case in Europe, while the number and energy of the trading guilds is
shown by the same evidence. ¦ Their coins give reality to -the passages in
Mencius, where princes are promised, as a reward of good government, that
" the traders will all seek to buy and sell " in the markets of the virtuous
ruler. The habit of self-government and respect for local liberties, which
characterize the Chinese, must have established their deepest roots when
the government of the States and the Empire was in the worst disorder.
But the lines followed by the independent townships, which coined money,
were probably substantially the same as those embodied in the ideal legis
lation of the Chow Li.
Written deeds and agreements were in common use in the Chow Dynas
ty, especially a sort of indenture consisting of a tablet of bamboo, upon
which the terms of the contract were written in duplicate, and which was
then divided between the contracting parties. According to the Chow Li,
these were used for all loans and lesser transactions regarding things which
pass " from hand to hand ; '' nothing could be sold without either an in
denture or a deed of warranty,1 which was used for the greater sales, i.e. of
slaves, horses, and cattle. These documents were submitted to an officer
of the market and presumably registered ; and, in accordance with the
curious Chinese tendency to regard alljayy_as_penal,_any dispute as to a
debt or contract was decided before a judge, who called for the two parts
of the agreement, and punished whichever party had attempted to infringe
it. Misconduct was punished either by the cangue, fine, or blows ; the
expression " to be beaten in the market place " is used in the Shoo King to
represent the utmost depth of ignominy.
The booths of the market were grouped as far as possible in accordance
with the analogy of the rural divisions, every twenty booths having a head
man, who was responsible for the conduct of the sales and the payment of
the Government dues. Three markets were held in the day : in the morn
ing shopkeepers and costermongers make their purchases ; the great market
is in the afternoon, when the townspeople and those from a distance come
in and buy for themselves ; while in the evening the retail dealers sell off
the remains of the stock which they purchased wholesale in the morning.
A commentator of the Han Dynasty observes that these regulations are
only based on the convenience and actual practice of the mass of pur
chasers and traders.2
The section of the Chow Li which is missing is the one devoted to the
ministry of public works, which would have been among the most interest
ing for us. Its place has been supplied to a certain extent by a treatise
older than the Burning of the Books, but later than the rest of the Classic,
of which the subject is the- " Examination of the work of 'the'artisans." 3
The title suggests that it is a manual intended for the use of inspectors of
the Government factories and workshops, and the limited number of trades
and processes described also makes it seem probable that only 'those are
dealt with which were carried on under the immediate direction Of the
' Tcheou-li, i. p. 318. '' lb., p. 312. 3 lb., ii. pp. 456-611.

INDUSTRY AND TRADE. 61
State, and as a branch of the public works department. The work is full
of technical details of little general interest or intelligibility, but passages
in it help the imagination to enter into the .kind of workshop tradition
which must have prevailed in Egypt, while intensifying our regret that we
have no similar record of the rules by which " wise artists in their art "
built up statues and temples in the valley of the Nile.
As a specimen of the more philosophical portions, the following sped-.
mens may suffice. Four different provinces are mentioned : in one, " He
who has no mattock cannot do without. Every man there can make mat
tocks." In the next, armour is indispensable, and every one can make
armour; in the next pike-handles are essential, and everyone can make
pike-handles, even as, among the nomads^of the North, where bows and
chariots are indispensable, every man can make bows and chariots. " Sages
invent. Men of skill continue what the first began. The artisans pre
serve (the arts) from generation to generation: All the operations executed
by the hundred artisans are the work of the sages. They forge metal to
make swords. They harden clay to make pots. They make carts to go
on the roads. They make boats to go on the water. All these arts were
created by sages. Four things must come together to produce good work ;
the season of heaven, the emanation of earth, good material, and a skilled
workman. If the ,material is good, and the workman skilled, and the
result of his work is not good, the fit season has not been chosen; the
emanation, of the earth has not been favourable." x In illustration of which
view, the excellence of the knives,: swords, and axes of certain districts is
ascribed to the earthly emanation,; the bows and arrows of other parts
owe their quality to the. goodness of the material, the wood and horn to
be found there, while plants depending on climate and water owe their
excellence to the seasons of heaven. No doubt much of the traditional
geomancy of the country started from speculations and experience of this
degree of rationality. The skill of the artisan was rewarded by a celebrity
akin to that of the artist in Europe. Kung Chiu, the Chinese Giotto, who
could draw an exact circle with the unaided hand, is called an artisan.2
The Li Ki, enumerates six kinds of public works — terraces and masonry,
metal work, stone work, carpentering and furniture, leather work, or the
preparation of skins, and basket work, or the working of twigs 3 — but the
" Examination " goes into minuter details. The manufacture of chariots
is the first industry described, and the art is said to be a special favourite
with the Chow Dynasty, as that of the potter was with Shun, that of house
building with Hia, and that of making cups, of metal with Yin. Elaborate
numerical proportions are given for the different parts of the, vehicle, and
each piece is to be separately examined and tested before it is used. The
wheels are tested by a compass, the straight parts by a square, the uprights
1 Tcheou-li, ii. pp. 459, 460..
2 Giles' Chuang Tzu, p. 115.
3 S.B., xxvii. p. no. The "Six Treasuries" and the " Six Manufactures." of the:
" Snn nf Ut>xvpT\ " nre somewhat vnrinnslv described. ¦

62 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
by a plumb line, the horizontals by a water level, and the comparative size
of corresponding parts by weighing the pieces and measuring their cubic
content with grains of the large millet ; the men who understand these
processes are called royal workmen.
Whenever reasons are given for any precept, they are of the most naive
description ; but it is characteristic of the Chinese mind, which has been
content for 4,000 years with wheels of an elaborately clumsy kind, that
quite early in the time, they thought it worthy of solemn record that large
wheels go over the ground more easily than small ones, and that narrow
tires sink into the mud less hopelessly than wide ones. In wheels, as in
everything else, the test of good workmanship is for a thing to be service
able till it is worn out equally in all its parts by use, and the rules about
doing everything at a prescribed time of year allow ample leisure for
" seasoning " the materials.
The next chapter is devoted to the workers in metal : knives for writing
on bamboo tablets, arrow-heads, javelins, swords, bells, and measures of
capacity are made by different workmen. Then follow the makers of
leather armour and drum makers. The dyers and silk dressers are treated
next, with all who work in colours, then the jade cutters and polishers, the
arrow-makers, potters and moulders of culinary utensils, — among which
we recognise the prototype of a modern patent cooking pot, for preparing
food by the use of steam alone.1 The workers in precious wood make the
cases for musical instruments. Wooden targets and the handles of pikes
and javelins are made by the same class ; and a long and very elaborate
chapter is given to the manufacture of bows, which were made of wood
and bone, cunningly fitted together to form an arc of greater or less curva
ture according to the strength of the bow, and strung, not like the English
long bow — by the simple bending of a straight sapling — but by a tour de
force, involving the reversal of the curve, or, so to speak, turning the un
strung, manufactured bow inside out. A list of the workers was kept
according to their skill, and extra rations of wine and meat were given to
the best.
Builders or architects form a separate profession, and the occasion for
their services is considered to arise when a capital city is to be founded.
All the streets are at right angles, and the general plan of the typical city
follows the analogy of the nine squares ; but instead of the central plot
only being occupied for public purposes, that is assigned for the palace of
the prince, which has the public market on one side and the place of audi
ence and the ancestral temple on the other. The width of the streets is
measured in carriage breadths, and the narrowest are required to give a
gang-way for carts in the middle, and a path for men on one side and one
for women on the other. The proportion between the height and thick
ness of the city walls is prescribed ; that of private dwellings is left to cus
tom or choice, but the angle of all roofs is determined by law, a greater
slope being required in the case of thatched than of tiled roofs, as the
1 Tcheou-li, ii. p. 538.

INDUSTRY AND TRADE. 63
water runs off them less easily. The roofs of barns and warehouses and
the copings of walls are allowed to be still flatter.
The construction of the canals and water-courses belongs to the same
department of public works. -V double spadeful makes a furrow a foot
deep and wide ; it is with such channels that the cultivator waters his own
field ; a little ditch of double this size separates each field or lot of 100
mow, and the earth dug out from it is raised and forms a little foot-path
between the plots ; the water-course which surrounds a tsing (the nine
plots, with a central well, which form a hamlet) is four feet deep and wide,
and is called a little canal, and has a footway along it. The hundred is
surrounded by a channel of eight feet and a roadway. All five sorts of
footway are planted at the edges with wood, which serves for a defence.1
In theory the departments are bounded by canals drawn direct from the
large natural streams which have names of their own, and are, in fact,
rivers controlled for irrigation purposes. The size of the rivers and the
necessity of providing against inundations caused by their overflow was
always a force working in favour of centralization. Mencius contrasts the
administration of Yu, which convoyed the waters safely to the outer seas,
with that of his contemporaries, who were content if they could only carry
their floods off into the territory of the adjoining States : a waste of water
hateful to the benevolent mind of the sage.
The care of the highways was regarded as of equal importance with that
of the water-courses and the markets. The system of post houses and
hotels at stated distances, by which mediaeval travellers were so much im
pressed, dates from the Chow Li; there was a post house at the distance of
every ten and an inn at every thirty li, and a market-place with hostelry at
every fifty li. There are five recognised sorts of roadway, from the foot-
tracks along the hills, which are trodden by use and filled up by the wild
grass if not frequented, and the paths along the water-courses of the home
stead, to the roads for local traffic and the great imperial highways, kept
¦open, in theory for distant tribute bearers, feudal princes coming to pay their
homage at court, and the imperial progresses.2 One of the few signs of
national unity to which Confucius could point, was that the same written
character was used, and that all over the empire " carriages have all wheels
of the same size," which modern travellers find to their cost is not the case
now in all the provinces of China.3
The Chow Li, besides contemplating a uniform scale of proportion for
wheeled vehicles and prohibiting " furious driving," also provides for the
regulation of traffic at crowded crossings, whether by land or water ; boats
1 According to the Li Ki, " Hills and mounds, forests and thickets, rivers and marshes,
•ditches and canals, city walls and suburbs, houses, roads, and lanes took up one-third of
the whole country, the rest being cultivable fields." (S.B., xxvii. p. 245.)
2 Tcheou-li, ii. pp. 198, 280, 564. The day's work of the labourers employed in
digging canals is determined afresh for each job, after the nature of the soil, and conse
quent difficulty of the task, has been ascertained, lb., p. 570.
8 All the ordinary roads are cut into deep ruts, in which alone the wheels can run, so
that the axle-trees of vehicles have actually to be changed on entering a district where
the ruts form, so to speak, a wide instead of a narrow gauge, or conversely.

64 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
and carriages were only allowed to pass in a prescribed order, which police
men stationed at the critical spots were instructed to enforce. The same
police were charged to arrest persons of doubtful reputation, or who are
found in the streets at improper hours or under suspicious circumstances.
No one save a criminal, or " one hastening to the funeral rites of a parent,"
was expected to commit the eccentricity of travelling by starlight.1
Uniformity of costume was already established, and, as now, the chief
mandarin of the district gave the signal for all under his government to
begin or leave off their summer hats. It was one of the duties of the
Minister of Instruction to secure uniformity of costume, which the Han
commentators supposed to have been desired as a check on the extrava
gance of the well-to-do. But the only law of a directly sumptuary charac
ter is one limiting the expenditure on weddings .- presents of silk were an
essential part of the rites of betrothal, but not more than ten pieces were
allowed to be given as the marriage offering.
1 S.B., x.wii. p. 339.

CHAPTER VI.
SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS IN MEDIAEVAL CHINA.
With regard to the social and domestic usages of the people, the Odes
show us things as they were between the rise of Chow and the time of
Confucius ; and the Li Ki shows us things as it was thought they ought to
be between the age of Confucius and the restoration of letters after the fall
of Tsin. But as the Li Ki deals systematically with subjects only touched
on incidentally in the Odes or the Rites of Chow, it does not follow from
the silence of the latter that customs first mentioned in the Book of Rites
were unknown to the men of Chow. All the Chinese Classics received
their present form at latest during the rule of the Han, and accordingly,
the least ancient passages in the least ancient books must at least be as old
as that period. And the customs of Chinese society are so slow to change,
and change so gradually, that the Li Ki, which contains many passages
certainly due to the disciples of Confucius, may be treated as continuing
the evidence of the Odes and Tso's commentary.
Technically speaking, "Middle Antiquity" in China means the period
during which the Chow Dynasty nominally held the empire ; but the 1,000
years (from 800 B.C. to 200 a.d.) during which the latest classics were
composed and the whole canon compiled, have so much in common, and
are so far marked off by that fact from later ages, that they may be treated
as forming, in a sense, a single period — the Chinese Middle Ages.
The relations between husbands and wives as exemplified in the Odes
are far from unpleasing, and it is significant of the moral tone of the
community, that this classical collection of popular poetry does not con
tain the slightest hint of an approach to indecency, and only a few very
simple versions of the world-old village idyll of unfortunate or unauthorized
courtships. Whether in the Chinese version of " Comin' through the
Rye," 1 and " Oh, had I wist before I kissed," in the maiden's rebuke to the
adventurous Mr. Chung, or in the rather pretty allusive poems hinting at
moonlight, midsummer, or woodland assignations, the Chinese Burns never
approaches to the laxity of speech or morals usual with the popular
muse elsewhere. The love of nature and the appreciation of delicate
effects of sky and foliage, to which the national arts bear witness, show
themselves also in the short but significant and graceful refrains with
which most of the stanzas begin, like the Italian slornelli.
1 Legge, iv. pp. 97, 140, 141.
vol. ii.- — p.c. 65

66 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
There are poems expressive of a lover's longings and a bridegroom's
joy, of womanly devotion, from the wife who sighs in triplets1 for her absent
husband— a day without him is as long as three months, three seasons,
three years — to the constant widow who mourns : —
"The dolichos grows, covering the thorn trees ;
The convolvulus spreads all over the waste."
But the beloved is no longer here, she must dwell alone
"Through the days of summer,
Through the nights of winter,
Till the lapse of a hundred years :
When I shall go home to his abode." 2
The ideal of conjugal duty and happiness is " to grow old together," and
the poets are on the side of the old wife when the husband neglects her
for a new flame ; this is as wicked as to use the honourable yellow dress-
stuff for trousers and linings, and the vulgar green for an upper robe !
In small household affairs, the husband as well as the wife was required to
conform to the dictates of social propriety, and a stinging epigram would
be launched against the rich miser who allowed "the delicate fingers of
the bride to be used in making clothes " during the three months' holiday
honeymoon of custom, or who had his old clothes mended up, instead of
starting housekeeping with a proper trousseau, as if he were a poor fellow
who could only afford canvas shoes in frost.3
A common type of poem expresses the sorrows of soldiers on a distant
expedition, forced to leave their homes and families. Sometimes the
anxious thoughts of the family about the absent one are expressed, but the
commonest topics are his anxiety as to how his parents will get food when
he is not there to plant rice and maize for them, his concern at the thought
of his mother's having to cook the dinner, and his overwhelming grief
if they both die when he is not there to bury them, or to requite that
parental kindness, which, according to a famous line, is " like great heaven,
illimitable." i
They cry out in longing to return to their ordinary life : " We are not
rhinoceroses, we are not tigers to be kept in these desolate wilds," 5 with
every man torn from his wife and kept constantly on the march ! One
of the longer remonstrances is rather amusing, as the officer who thinks he
gets more than his share of foreign service complains of the unfairness of
his superiors, " making me serve as if I alone were worthy ! " 6 Another
contains the phrase already quoted, which speaks volumes for the whole-
someness of family relations in China, even in the worst days of feudal
anarchy. The crowning woe which saddens the sorrowful hearts of the
warriors is that they cannot keep faith with their wives :—
1 ' For life and for death, however separated,
To our wives we pledged our words,
We held their hands ; we were to grow old together with them ;" '
1 Legge, iv. p. 120. 2 lb., p. 186. 3 lb., p. 41. * n, p ,,2
5 lb., p. 424. Cf. Giles (Nineteenth Cent.,]™. 1894, p. 116), on nostalgia of the rnoaem
Chinese. 6 lb., p. 361. 7 ib,t p. 49.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS. 67
and this cannot be if married soldiers are marched off to die in the dis
tant south.1
A somewhat similar piece is ascribed to the Duke of Chow himself; but
here — after describing the sufferings of the soldiers on a three years' ex
pedition to the rainy east, while their hearts were in the west, and deer
grazed in their paddocks and caterpillars crawled over their mulberry
trees, wild flowers choked their gardens and spiders' webs hung over their
doors — the fortunate return of the troops is also commemorated, and all
ends happily as the younger warriors receive the rewards of valour from
young ladies with bay and red horses, whose mothers have "tied their
sashes." But admirable as are these new marriages, the poet concludes,
" How can the reunion of the old be expressed? " 2
A variety of terms are used by Dr. Legge to describe the position of
the one lawful wife, whose eldest son is entitled to perform the mourning
rites for his father. This lady is spoken of as the " established," the
11 confirmed," the " commissioned," the " acknowledged " or the proper
wife. A Chinaman can have only one such wife at a time, 3 whose hand
was formally solicited from her parents with the customary present of
pieces of silk. According to the Li Ki, " after three months she presents
herself in the ancestral temple, and is styled "the new wife who has come."
A day is chosen for her to sacrifice at the shrine of her father-in-law :
"expressing the idea of her being the established wife."4 There was an
ancient custom by which a bride after a short interval returned on a visit
to her parents, and it seems as if the marriage was not regarded as com
plete or final till after these months of probation. If the bride dies during
this interval, "she should be taken back and buried among the kindred of
her own family, showing that she had not become the established wife." a
These lawful wives took part in most solemn ceremonies ; the eldest
son, however aged, was required to have such a wife to preside over the
funeral rites, and the confirmed wives of great officers reproduced among
themselves the ceremonies practised by their husbands. The ruler and
his wife owed certain observances to the acknowledged wife of a great
officer. The language of a ruler, when demanding the hand of a neigh
bouring prince's daughter, was, " I beg you, O ruler, to give me your
1 Of course only strictly moral and moderate sentiments are to be expected in the
King, but feudal romance had its extravagances, and Chuang-tzu has preserved for us
the memory of a Chinese Leander. "Wei Shang made an assignation with a girl
beneath a bridge. The girl did not come and the water rose, but Wei Shang would not
leave ; he grasped a buttress and died." (H. A. Giles' tr., p. 395.)
2 Legge, I.e., p. 235.
3 The feudal ruler, according to Dr. Legge, could only in all his life have one wife,
one lady, that is, to be called by that name. Something answering to the preliminary
betrothal of the West seems to have lasted down to the Three kingdoms. The marriage
day was fixed when the presents were sent, at the interval of a year for the emperor, six
months for the great vassals, and one month for the commonalty, the royal custom being
no doubt the earliest. Another trace of archaic law is preserved in the San Kwo Chi,
where a pretender says he will do something " when I have founded my dynasty by the
marriage of my eldest son." (San Kwo Chi, ii. p. 87. Translated by T. l'avie.)
4 S.B., xxvii. pp. 322, 316. 5 Cf. ante, vol. i. pp. 206 and 493.

68 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
elegant daughter, to share this small State with my poor self, to do service
in the ancestral temple, and at the altars to (the spirits of) the land and the
grain." The status of such a wife was equal and honourable ; and, as in
the course of history, the participation of women in public receptions and
ceremonies gradually ceased, we are justified in believing that the position
of the lawful wife was most distinguished in the remotest times.
A curious circumstance which may be connected with a forgotten sense
of the importance of female kinship is the existence of three distinct terms
to describe affinity through women. There are two words, answering
approximately to the Latin agnate and cognate ; the former (nei khin)
comprehends all kindred derived by descent in the male line from the
same stock as the individual. The latter has three subdivisions, trans
lated (by Sir W. H. Medhurst) as " mother's kin," " wife's kin," and
"daughter's kin," including all varieties of relations by marriage.1 In
historic times these relationships were regarded as unimportant, and calling
only for the slighter degrees of complimentary mourning ; but if this had
always been so, it is difficult to see why such pains should have been
taken to name them, or why marriage with relatives on the mother's side
should have been as strictly prohibited as is still the case.
Confucius was a great believer in the due subjection of women, and
though he was incapable of falsifying the classic texts to favour his own
opinions, as editor and commentator he naturally gave precedence to the
phrases and interpretations most in harmony with his views of propriety.
In a book which bears the title Concerning Dykes, there is a passage which
may refer to a conflict between the modern and the archaic custom.
Confucius is made to describe the proper forms of marriage. The bride
groom comes forward to meet his bride, and her parents bring her forward
and give her to him. " In this way a dyke is raised in the interests of the
people; and yet there are cases in which the bride will not go" (to the
bridegroom).2 To found the Egyptian, the Chinese, or any other family
involving community of property and religious rites, it is necessary that
one or other of the married couple should " go " from the old home to the
new ; and as the bald statements of Chinese tradition are never meaning
less, it is very possible that the sage meant to condemn the usage of
some families in which the bridegroom was required to join the family of
his father-in-law. This is the less improbable, as such an inversion of the
general usage is still sanctioned, when a rich citizen who has no son
desires to adopt and give his daughter in marriage to a poor scholar of
distinction, and the son-in-law who comes to live with his wife's parents
acquires a title to share in the division of their wealth. At the present
day, the question whether a son-in-law has been adopted, so as to acquire
the rights of a son and successor, turns exactly upon the point whether he
has been domiciled with his wife's parents.
The multifarious regulations on the subject of mourning correspond to
serious opinions on the character of family relationships. " The mourning
1 S.B., xxvii. p. 203. 2 n., xxviii p 299

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS. 69
worn for the son of a brother should be the same as for one's own son, the
object being to bring him still nearer to oneself. An elder brother's wife
and his younger brother do not wear mourning for each other, the object
being to maintain the distance between them." 1 A man did not wear
mourning for his step-father, unless they had dived together, the step-father
having no son of his own, and contributing to the sacrifices which the son
was bound to make to his real ancestors. And as a further illustration of
the effect of this " companionship of the cupboard," in giving reality to
the remotest ties, we learn that even "the husband of a maternal cousin
and the wife of a maternal uncle,'' should wear the three months' mourning
for each other, "if they have eaten together from the same fireplace." In
the same way the more distant relatives of a parent are mourned for by
such of the younger generation as were personally acquainted with them,
but not by any living at a distance to whom they were unknown.
The existence of fostering as an institution in ancient China, rests mainly
on a saying of Mencius : " The ancients exchanged sons, and one taught
the son of another." 2 In the -time of Confucius, it was considered a
doubtful point whether mourning should be worn for a foster mother ; the
sage thought not,3 and endeavoured to represent the doing so as a modern
innovation ; but as he implies that the institution was more general in anti
quity than then, we may respectfully venture to question his infallibility.
The foster mother was one of the inferior wives or concubines, — in fact a
step-mother, — and if the lawful wife died, she might for some purposes
take her place, and the diversity of usage was probably owing to the fact
that the character of the relation varied much in individual cases. The
statement of the Li Ki, that a man did not wear mourning for the parents of
his nurse,4 would hardly have been called for unless the relation were so
close as to make it in some cases appear natural that he should do so.
Reference has already been made to the principles followed in the for
mation of new branch families.5 Mourning was worn in theory for four
generations of ascendants and descendants in the direct line, and for con
temporaries descended in the same fifth generation from the " honoured
head" of the family. If a family is kept up longer than this, each fresh
generation superannuates the "honoured head" recognised by the last;
that is to say, his tablet is removed from its place, by the father, grand
father, etc., into the general collection of such monuments preserved in
the ancestral temple. In the case of a clan or ruling house, claiming
descent from some high ancestor of remoter antiquity, the high ancestor
or great honoured head keeps his place unaltered "for a hundred
generations;" but with ordinary private households or branch families,
the person of the honoured head changed in each generation, so that the
honours appropriate to the position were always given to an ancestor of
the same degree of remoteness from the sacrificer.
1 S.B., xxvii. p. 147. 2 iv. i. xviii. 3. 3 S.B., xxvii. p. 327.
4 lb., xxviii. p. 51. 6 Vol..i. p. 552. Cf. Appendix K.

?0 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
The position of the paternal grandfather in China bore some resem
blance to that occupied by the maternal grandfather ,n Egypt. The grand-
son is conceived, for some purposes, as actually nearer than the son, and
it is he who acts as personator of the dead. A curious and burdensome
privilege enjoyed by eldest sons, throws light upon the train of thought
which gives its character to this relation. Only an eldest son is required or
permitted to wear the three years' mourning for his own eldest son, and
he may do so because this son represents the direct line of the father and
grandfather. The share taken by the established wife in the important
business of founding a family is evidenced by a similar rule, a man, who
is the lineal head of a new branch family, being allowed to mourn the full
period (of three years) for his wife, even though his own mother may be
living. . .
The commentators are perplexed by this provision, which is inconsis
tent with the general rule, requiring a wife to mourn three years for her
husband as for a parent, while he only observes one year's mourningfor
her. But it becomes intelligible and reasonable if viewed as a survival
from a forgotten period, when the mother, as well as the son, was con
sidered an essential link in the genealogical chain. Complimentary
mourning (for three months) might be worn for the head of a clan, not
on the ground of relationship, which was not counted for this purpose
through more than five generations, but on the ground of his representing
the remote high ancestor, from whom all the different branch families
claimed descent.
A curious proof of the tenacity of Chinese usage is afforded by a pas
sage in the Chow li, forbidding a custom which is still in use. The officer
of marriages, according to this clause,1 forbids the removal of the bodies
of those who have died unmarried to fresh tombs, where, by a sort of post
humous marriage, they are united to girls who have died before reaching
the marriageable age. It is not quite clear whether betrothed pairs whose
marriage had not been culpably adjourned might be united after death,
but the intention seems to have been to promote marriages by closing a too
easy way of wiping out the disgrace attached to celibacy. One of the odes
of Chow, which has rather perplexed the commentators, becomes intelli
gible if we suppose this officer of marriages to have taken his functions
seriously and have interfered to prevent love matches that offended in
any way against the rules of propriety. " Do not I think of you," is the
burden of the quatrains the maiden addresses to her lover, " but I am
afraid of this officer and dare not rush to you." And she consoles herself
with the hope of the very arrangement proscribed in the Rites : —
" When living, we may have to occupy different apartments ;
But when dead, we shall share the same grave." 2
1 I. p. 308. If a man married a widow with children, the officer of marriages regis
tered them as belonging to his family, the presumption being that the mother would not
have been allowed to take them with her to a second husband if they had other guar
dians or property.
2 C.C., iv. i.p. 121.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS. 71
A youth was considered marriageable at twenty, and a girl at fifteen ;
thirty and twenty respectively marked the lawful limit for celibacy ; single
men and women above those ages were liable to be exhorted by the
officer of marriages, for it was a part of good government to have no un
married persons in the country.
An account of the nine provinces and their produce in the Chow Li
mentions the proportion of men to women in each province,1 which varies
extraordinarily, from five to one to one to three. The average of the
nine is possible enough, as it is at the rate of twenty-five men to twenty-
four women ; but it is difficult to believe that the statistics give an accurate
account of such variations as might be noted, for instance, in the United
States between Massachusetts and Nevada, though there is no other con
ceivable explanation of the discrepancy if historical.
Children were registered at three months old, the time when they re
ceived from the father their first or childish name. A record was made of
the child's birth on such a day, month, and year, and the secretaries of the
hamlets made two copies of it, one of which was kept in the village office,
and the other passed to the officer of the district. It is thus evident that
in well ordered departments the materials for a census of some kind must
have existed from very early times. Indeed, the very reasons given against
the proposal, when a prince in the 9th century B.C. was anxious to number
the people of a certain district, betray some experience of the results of
statistical inquiries. The wise minister of the period observed 8 that it was
the business of the local officials to know the number of families and of
persons in their departments ; the officers in charge of public works must
know how much labour they can command, and the military officers know
how many soldiers can be raised, and that is all the knowledge required for
practical purposes. But, though the district in question was one of the
most populous in the country, the total number of the inhabitants was sure
to fall short of the emperor's expectations, while the report of his dis
appointment would be sure to reach the neighbouring princes, and encou
rage them to presume on his supposed weakness.
A rural calendar of the Hia Dynasty, supposed to have been found in the
grave of Confucius in the 3rd century a.d., adds to our former list of times
and seasons, the information that at such a day of the second month (i.e.
towards the end of March), " they execute the dance wan, they enter the
school." Boys were sent to school at eight years old, to learn the elements
of writing and arithmetic. The lives of both Confucius and Mencius con
tain anecdotes of their school days, and the mother of the latter fixed her
residence opposite a school, in order that her son, who was apt to imitate
what he saw around him,1 should have nothing but examples of studiousness
and decorum in sight.

1 Book xxxiii. §§ 8-49.
2 De Mailla, Histoire gMrale de la Chine, ou Annates de cet Empire traduites du
Tong-Kien Kang-mou, 1777, ii. p. 42.

72 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
According to the Li Ki,1 there was anciently a school for every twenty-
five families, a college for 500 or the department, an academy for 2,500
or the county, and a university for the whole kingdom. The ordinary
curriculum extended over seven or nine years; examinations took place
every other year, and selected candidates from the ordinary colleges were
transferred to the Imperial college. The competitors were exempt from
forced labour in their own villages, and the students of the imperial college
were excused from all manual work. Not less authentic and more graphic
accounts of the common schools are given by two writers of the first cen
tury a.d.2 : " When the plough has been brought under cover, the harvests
gathered, and the operations of the year ended, the unmarried youths go
to school, at fifteen to the lower school, at eighteen to the higher ; at the
winter solstice they leave school for forty-five days (as is the usage even
until now), and prepare for the labours of cultivation." So far Ma-yong,
while Pan-kow (58- 76 a.d.), in his history of the first Han Dynasty, adds
that in winter, to save lights and firing, the villagers assembled in the
common hall, the women with their work, while the young men not yet
taxpayers repaired to the school-house. The lads who entered the
elementary school at eight begin at fifteen to learn music and the Rites.
The teachers in these schools were not appointed by the State, but the
district officers were expected to keep an eye on their efficiency.
It would be an anachronism to assume from these particulars that
during the Chow Dynasty or earlier a system of graduated schools pro
vided a complete ladder of learning from the village to the court. The
Grand Director of Public Works is required by the Chow Li to teach the
people " the six virtues, the six praiseworthy actions, and the six branches
of knowledge ; '' i.e. music, dancing, archery, charioteering, writing, and
arithmetic. But so wide a curriculum warns us to understand the word
" to teach " as referring to the educational effects of good government,
rather than to any special supervision of the schools, where virtue can
hardly be taught in class.
The fact seems to be that under the three first dynasties the idea of
public instruction as a State function, over and above independent local
schools, was mixed up with that of other public establishments, such as
the official academy of music, the Court of the Heir Apparent, with whom
the sons of high officers and nobles were educated, and the " college," as
it would be called by analogy with mediaeval endowments, where State
pensioners were maintained at the public cost. " It was the universal
rule in ancient China that the young should be taught and the old main
tained in the same buildings." 3 A prince of Tse, who headed one of the
1 Book xvi.. Record on the Subject of Education, § 4.
" E. Biot, Essai sur T Histoire de T Instruction publu/ue en Chine, pp. 54, 64.
3 .S-.-S., xxvii. p. 242 n. ; Tcheou-li, i. p. 82, ii. p. 211. According to the Bamboo Books
m the sixth year of Wu-ting, he "inspected the schools where they nourished the aged "
This prince, who is the subject of the eighth and ninth books of Shang in the Shoo (5 B
111. pp. 112-119), reigned, according to the chronology of the Bamboo Books, 1275-1214
B.C., and according to the usual scheme, 1 324-1 264 B.C.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS. 73
federal leagues formed by the feudal States, was credited with a desire to
revive the educational as well as the other good customs of the kings of
Chow. His allies pledged themselves to " Honour the aged, protect the
orphans, name the deserving to office, nourish capable men, and bring
forward virtuous ones " — all of which undertakings would anciently have
been included under the head of " teaching " the six virtues.
Ma-twan-lin saw plainly that the system of examinations was only a
modern and not very successful expedient for the detection of capacity
and virtue, and he supposes that in the good old times men were first
recommended for employment on account of their character and reputa
tion, and were then examined to see if they possessed the special know
ledge required for the discharge of their duties ; whereas subsequently
scholars applied themselves to one kind of study with a view to the
examinations, and, as soon as the examination was over, all that they had
leamt was put aside and neglected, while they began a fresh education in
the practical work belonging to their offices, so that science and govern
ment were divorced.
The enumeration of the duties incumbent on filial children in families
of official rank1 is our best guide as to the indoor, domestic life of the
Chinese during the period of Middle Antiquity. The housework, as we
should say, is expected to be performed by the children or inferior wives.
These, " at the first crowing of the cock, should wash their hands and
mouths, gather up their pillows and fine mats, sprinkle and sweep out the
apartments, hall, and courtyard, and spread the mats, each one doing his
proper work." The sons and sons' wives dress and wash with care, and
hang at their girdle or sash " their articles for use." Both sexes carry the
" duster and handkerchief, the knife and whetstone, the small spike and
the metal speculum to get fire from the sun, and the borer to get fire from
wood," to which are added the implements of writing and archery for
men, and for women a needle-case, silk, and thread. When fully dressed
the children go to inquire after the health of their parents (or parents-in-
law), bring them water to wash, and then the best of food. They " should
not move the clothes, coverlets, fine mats or undermats, pillows, and stools
of their parents." They should reveren tly regard their staff and shoes, but
not presume to approach them, nor should they meddle with their food
or utensils, unless it were to eat what was left from their parents' meals.
"Sweet, soft, and unctuous things" left by the grandparents should be
given to the little children, who are also allowed to go to bed, to get up,
and to take their meals when they please.
It shows the force of ideas in China that the young married people, to
whose interests the older generations are sometimes sacrificed in other
communities of the same type, are here subordinated to the old and young.
It was considered proper that children should be petted and indulged, as
they still are in modern China. At eight they begin to learn manners,2
1 S.B., xxvii. p. 448 ff.
2 "When the child was able to take its own food, it was taught to use the right hand ; "

74 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
and the art of yielding to others ; and after that, advancing years only
bring fresh duties till the son becomes himself a husband and father.
Elder children, however, are only subject to a constitutional rule. We
have heard much about the duties of the sovereign, but they are all summed
up in the phrase, he should be the father and mother of his people. The
father and mother therefore, in private life, have to consider the interests
and inclinations of their children, as the ruler should those of the multi
tudes. Before his parents a son should not speak of himself as old, and,
though he might speak of the duty owing to parents, he might not speak
of the gentle kindness due from them ; x but the latter duty was not the
less recognised, and it would evidently be a proper topic of conversation
in a company of parents. If children do not like the food or clothes pro
vided for them, they are required to taste or put them on without demur ;
but the parents are expected to divine from the nuances of still respectful
deportment that they are not altogether pleased, and the children await
their further commands with a reasonable expectation that their tastes will
be considered.
On the whole we should judge modest comfort, with an absence of
display, to have characterized the family life of ancient as of modern
China. The extent to which the family waited on itself reminds us of
what we are told of the Nabataeans.2 Life was more decorous than among
the Egyptians, more formal than in Babylonia, and more elaborate than
in any other community not dependent on slave labour. One note of
material civilization, a free use of the bath, is conspicuous. It was the
duty of filial children to prepare tepid water, and invite their parents to
take a bath every fifth day ; and the bathing tub of Thang the Successful
was decorated with the inscription, " If you can one day renovate yourself,
do so from day to day ; yea, daily renovate yourself." 3
The constant efforts after self-rectification of the Chinese sage stand
midway between the self-discipline required from the Christian saint and
the purely secular Bildung or culture of which the greatest German poet
was an apostle. The " superior man " in China " cultivates his person ; "
he " internally examines his heart," he keeps watch over himself when
alone,4 and, for his own satisfaction simply, strengthens himself in gravity
and reverence, because " indifference and want of restraint lead to a daily
deterioration." The ceremonies of politeness are the outward and visible
signs of goodwill and considerateness. "Courtesy is near to propriety ;"
conduct cannot go very far wrong which is kept within the rules of good
manners. In many cases the formal rules of propriety only emphasize the require
ments of natural politeness and good feeling. Take the following para
graph :—
and many of the precepts of the Li Ki would commend themselves equally to the approval
of any superior English upper nurse. v
1 S.B., xxviii. p. 291. 2 Ante, i. p. 512. s lb., p. 415.
4 lb., "The Great Learning," p. 413.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS.

75

" He who is condoling with one who has mourning rites on hand, and
is not able to assist him with a gift, should put no question about his
expenditure. He who is inquiring after another who is ill, and is not able
to send (anything to him), should not ask what he would like. He who
sees (a traveller), and is not able to lodge him, should not ask where he is
stopping. He who would confer something on another should not say,
'Come and take it;' he who would give something (to a smaller man)
should not ask him what he would like." 1
The first clauses require no comment, though they show that the exer
cise of hospitality and the interchange of friendly gifts were common ; but
the last sentence shows that in giving and receiving presents the self-
respect of both parties was to be protected with the utmost refinement. A
poor man will not ask for what he wants, he must be entreated to accept
it. No one will take a gift ; it must be offered or presented to a private
person just as much as to a ruler.
During a famine a gentleman had food prepared on the road to wait the
approach of hungry people. A particularly famished-looking wretch came
up, and he held out food and drink, saying, " Poor man ! come and eat."
" The man, opening his eyes with a stare and looking at him, said, ' It
was because I would not eat " Poor man come here food " that I am
come to this state.' Khien Ao immediately apologised for his words,
but the man after all would not take the food, and died." It is not clear
at once to the coarse Western mind where the wrong-doing of the story
lies, but the opinion of one of Confucius' chief disciples is recorded. The
gentleman in his judgment had certainly behaved amiss, but his error did
not deserve the severe punishment inflicted. " When he expressed his
pity as he did, the man might have gone away ; when he apologised, the
man might have taken the food." 2 Must we not, however, admit that
European falls short of Chinese civilization, while they do and we do not
feel it to be unseemly for a gentleman to bid a pauper " Come and eat,"
without further demonstrations of courtesy and respect ?
The common people were not expected to observe all the minuter rules
of ceremony. Such rules as that " In a house of mourning one should not
laugh ; " " When eating (with others) one should not sigh ; " " When there
is a body shrouded and coffined in his village one should not sing in the
lanes; " and that in " Walking with a funeral procession one should not pick
his way," — these might be observed by everybody ; but it is only the
superior man who is required to sacrifice his convenience to decorum : he,
" though poor, will not sell his vessels of sacrifice ; though suffering from
cold, he will not wear his sacrificial robes ; though he wants wood to build
a house, he will not cut down the trees on his grave mounds." 3
The superior man must act consistently, at whatever cost ; thus Confucius
happened one day to be carried away by sympathy, so as to wail more
1 S.B., xxvii. p. 89.
2 S.B., xxvii. p. 195. Cf. Mencius, vi. i. x. § 6.
3 S.B., xxvii. p. 104.

7 6 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
bitterly than was demanded by the strict rules of propriety, at the mourning
rites of an old host. On leaving the house he bade his companions unhar
ness two of the horses from his carriage and present them as his gift. It
was objected that such a gift was excessive, considering the slightness of
the relationship. The master said, " I found (the mourner) so dissolved
in grief that my tears flowed. I should hate it if those tears were not
followed. Do it, my child."1 Friendly regard and helpful action ought
to go together • it is equally improper to offer help without expressing
friendly feeling and to manifest friendly feeling without offering help, and
having done the one the superior man will not fail to do the other in due
proportion. The same refinement of feeling is to be noted in a variety of other rules.
It is not proper for a man to take office while in mourning for his parents ;
but if his services are needed by the State, he may give them gratuitously.2
During the same period he might speak of public affairs concerning his
superiors, but not of those in which he himself had an interest.3 On the
other hand, a prince may call at the house of a minister to inquire for the
sick or to condole with mourners, but he must not visit there for amuse
ment. It is not proper for men to praise their seniors or superiors ; but at
all times it was a point of good manners to give somebody else the credit
of whatever merit one was supposed to possess. A private citizen gave
the glory to his parents, a minister to his prince, and the ruler to high
heaven : 4 "it was thus that they showed submissive deference."
Minor instructions on points of etiquette are equally rational. " When
sitting by a person of rank, if he began to yawn and stretch himself, to turn
round his tablets, to play with the head of his sword, to move his shoes
about or to ask about the time of day, one might ask leave to retire." 5
1 S.B., xxvii. p. 137. 2 lb., p. 342; xxviii. 466. 3 lb., pp. 191, 233.
4 A famous litterateur of the Sung dynasty, Su Tung Po' (1036-1101 A.D.), enshrined
this ancient doctrine in the verses celebrating his arbour, which was " named after rain,
to celebrate joy," three days' heavy rain having come in time, and only just in time, to
save the harvest in the district, of which he had just been appointed governor : —
"Should Heaven rain pearls, the cold cannot wear them as clothes ;
Should Heaven rain jade, the hungry cannot use it as food.
It has rained without cease for three days —
Whose was the influence at work ?
Should you say it was that of your governor,
The governor himself refers it to the Son of Heaven.
But the Son of Heaven says, ' No ; it was God,'
And God says, ' No ; it was Nature.'
And as Nature lies beyond the ken of man,
I christen this arbour instead."
Gems of Chinese Literature, p. 186. In Mr. Giles' Chinese- English Dictionary the
meaning of the term here rendered " God " — Tsao hua— is given as " to make to create
the Creator, God, that which is brought about by a higher power ; Fortune, Luck : "
(the two last developments being comparatively late, like the popular' English use of the
word " Providence"). Chinese philosophers never seem to come nearer to Theism than
the Dens sive Natura of Spinoza ; but we have here something like the Scholastic dis
tinction between Natura nalurans and Natura naturata, or, in more modern phrase
between Force and Matter. The Son of Heaven gives the praise to the Eternal Forces
above, and the Eternal Forces above give the praise to Eternal Fact.
4 S.B., xxviii. pp. 72, 76, 81.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS. 77
Several other passages recall fragments of the Egyptian rules of propriety
— one should not speak positively if one has the slightest doubt ; but if one
has no doubt, one should not seem to be expressing one's own opinion
only. In the presence of a superior one should not answer a question
without looking round to see if any one else is going to speak. It is not
stated anywhere that unpalatable advice or criticism ought not to be
delivered point-blank, but should be wrapped up in the most delicately
suggestive of allegories. But this sort of diplomacy came too much by
nature to the Chinese official for it to need enjoining. One such example
of ministerial politeness may be quoted, which serves also to illustrate
the deeply rooted Chinese conviction that the art of government begins
at home. Duke Wen of Chin was going to a confederacy of feudal princes
to plan an attack on the State of Wei. On the journey his minister
laughed. The Duke asked what amused him, and he replied, that he was
laughing at the thought of a neighbour of his, who was escorting his wife
on a visit to her parents, when he espied a pretty girl picking mulberry
leaves. He stopped to talk to her, and then, turning his head, he saw
somebody else paying attention to his own wife. The Duke took the hint
and turned back, just in time to hear that an enemy had attacked his
northern frontier.1
As in Egypt, all classes anciently carried staffs,2 but about 500 B.C. the
right to do so was restricted to men of rank, because a wheelwright was
seen using his as a tool. " There was nowhere such a thing as being born
noble." 3 By ancient custom a piece of jade or a number of shells were
placed in the mouth of the deceased, while the tuft of hair worn by boys
and the observance of the feasts of lanterns and of the moon are other
traits common to both countries.
1 F. H. Balfour. Leaves from my Chinese Note Book, p. 132.
2 See Appendix M. 3 S.B., xxvii. p. 430.

CHAPTER VII.
FEUDALISM AND THE FALL OF CHOW.
The Odes confirm the witness of the other classics upon a point as to
which otherwise we might have felt some scepticism. That the extension
of the royal authority, described in the Rites, was not always a fiction
appears from the regrets expressed, especially in the smaller States, after the
setting in of its decay. In one of the odes it is said, " The way to Chow
should be level and easy." It used, according to the malcontents, " to be
straight as an arrow, trodden by officers coming willingly to court."1 Op
pressed citizens of Kwei or Tsa'ou regret the good old times " when the
States had their sovereign " to defend the weak and receive their appeals ;
and for centuries after there had ceased to be any real hope of a deliverer
from the West, they would gaze with sad longings upon the road to Chow,
and " sigh as they wake in the night to think of its capital city."
The orthodox way of maintaining the unity of the empire, notwith
standing its unwieldy growth, was for the subordinate princes to present
themselves regularly at court, and for the kings to make periodical pro
gresses throughout the States and receive appeals against evil-doers, to
remove usurpers and oppressors, and encourage each court to reproduce
in miniature the harmonising influence of the One Man. While this was
the case all went well ; but, on the other hand, " when government is not
correct, the ruler's seat is insecure. When the ruler's seat is insecure, the
great ministers revolt, and smaller ones begin pilfering. Punishments are
made severe and manners deteriorate."
In the 9th cent, this process of deterioration had begun, but the tradi
tions of Wen and Wu were still strong enough to enable virtuous ministers
to depose a bad king without being either suspected or guilty of disloyalty
to the dynasty. King Li was dethroned or compelled to fly 841 B.C.,2 and
till his death, in 827, the Government was carried on by a sort of protec
torate of virtuous ministers, who reconciled their duty to both king and
people by holding the Government in trust for the king's son, till his
father's death. Before the king was deposed by a popular rising, he had
not only been admonished in various odes, but also warned against sup
posing that discontent could be repressed by silencing its expression. "It
may be said," observed the minister who held the reins during the subse
quent interregnum, " that an emperor knows how to govern when poets
1 Legge, C.C., iv. pp. 337, 353.
2 From this date onwards all schemes of Chinese chronology agree.

FEUDALISM AND THE FALL OF CHOW. 79
are free to make verses, and the populace to act plays, historians to tell
the truth, ministers to give advice, the poor to grumble in paying their
taxes, the students to learn their lessons aloud, the workmen to praise their
skill and seek for work, the people to speak of all it hears, and the old men
to find fault with everything. Then things go on without much difficulty :
the tongues of the people are like the rivers and mountains from whence
the riches and necessaries of life are drawn." 1 Is there any other text of
the same antiquity as essentially modern in tone ?
Later political odes take the form of laments or denunciations : —
" Alas for the men of this time !
Why are they such cobras and efts? "
The wheels of the chariot of State drive heavily, but no one looks after
the coachman nor helps the wheels out of a rut. In a word,
" The majestic honoured capital of Chow
Is being destroyed by Sze of Paou,"
the favourite concubine of the king. Another poem belonging to the
reign of King Yew (780-770; denounces "women and eunuchs" as the
twin sources of court disorder. " A wise man builds up the wall, but a
wise woman overthrows it ; she is at best an owl, a stepping-stone to dis
order. Men had their lands and fields in times past, but these are now
seized by the unworthy favourites. For a woman to leave her silkworms
and weaving to meddle with public affairs is as unseemly as for a states
man to seek for the 300 per cent, profit of trade." The same author in
the next ode speaks of the people as abandoning their homes on account
of famine : " In the settled regions and on the borders all is desolation,"
and the kingdom, instead of increasing its boundaries as heretofore, is
diminishing daily.2
Among the provincial poems, two of the odes of Wei apostrophize the
swarms of corrupt or oppressive officials in terms that would admit of
tolerably world-wide application. The woodman's axe rings upon the
trees, he hews the wood for wheels and spokes, by the banks of the
rippling stream : but as for these ministers — you sow not nor reap : —
" How do you get the produce of these 300 farms ?
You sow not nor reap —
How do you get your three million of sheaves ?
How do you get the paddy for your 300 round binns?
You do not follow the chatfe —
How do we see the badgers, the three-year-olds and the quails
Hanging up in your court yards ? " 3
Another poem has the significant refrain, " Large rats, large rats, do not
eat our millet, our wheat ! " 4
The abuses complained of in the middle State spread to the feudatories,
though from time to time ambitious princes sought popularity by displaying
an ostentatious regard for the welfare of the multitudes. Such loyalty as
1 De Mailla, ii. p. 25. 2 C.C., iv. ii. p. 564.
3 lb., pt. i. pp. 170-1. 4 iv. p. 564.

80 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
was shown in these latter days towards the ruling dynasty was inspired by
the mutual jealousy of the States ambitious to succeed it, and was as fitful
and exacting as the loyally of the great Scotch nobles towards the Stuart
kings. And just as in Scotland, when the monarchy was weakest, the
nobles multiplied leagues and bonds or covenants, to secure whatever end
was at the moment desired by the strongest subjects, so in China the
intercourse between the States contemplated by the constitutional law of
the empire tended to be superseded by leagues and alliances for special
purposes. Such covenants were often of the same order as the agreement of 1772
for the partition of Poland, and thus the gradual absorption of the minor
States went on till only three or four of the most powerful retained enough
independence to resist the conquering armies of T'sin.1 The consequences
to the mass of the population can be inferred from the fact that Mencius
gives the second rank among unpardonable offenders to " those who unite
the princes in leagues," midway between those who are guilty of skill in
war, and those who enclose grass commons and make the cultivators pay
taxes for them as for arable land. For several centuries the consolidation
of new States and the breaking up of old ones went on together. The
princes who had no allied houses of feudal nobles were regarded as weak,
brotherless and unfriended,3 but where such houses were numerous or
powerful, they ended by overshadowing their chief, as the States had over
shadowed Chow, and the most masterful of the feudatories became inde
pendent, and, in their turn, leaders of a new confederacy.3
The border States had the advantage of being able to strengthen them
selves by incorporating friendly tribes, instead of merely redistributing old
fiefs among new adherents. The large, and at one time formidable State
of Tsoo included many more than half-barbarous tribes,4 who are probably
to be held responsible for the human sacrifices sometimes offered in that
State. And the Chinese commentators themselves give the same explana
tion of the startling fact that as lately as 620 b.c, 170 persons were buried
in the grave of a duke of T'sin, three of them being officers of distinguished
merit, in whose memory an ode of protest and lamentation was composed.5
A generation later, the bad example was followed in the State of Sung, and
1 Eighty-five principalities of one sort or another are mentioned in the CKun Ts'erv, and
as many as twenty-five were contemporaneous. Twenty-five have left some kind of
record of their existence, and thirteen of them were of importance. A specimen of
round-shouldered weight money, value I kin, is approximately dated by the fact that it
-was issued by the little State of Yu in S.W. Shansi, which was extinguished by Tsin in
654 B.C. (Chinese Coins, p. 19.)
2 In the words of one of the odes : " Great States are screens, great families are but
tresses ; the circle of relatives is a fortified wall." (Legge, C.C.. iv. p. 503.)
3 Thus Confucius complains that in his time the revenues of the State of Loo had
been alienated for five generations, while for four the government had been in the hands
of the great officers.
* Mencius uses, as an illustration of the force of example, the difficulty of teaching to
a child the speech of Tsoo if all those about it use the speech of Tse. ( Works iii ii
vi. § 1.)
5 C.C., iv. pt. i. p. 198.

FEUDALISM AND THE FALL OF CHOW. 81
for a century or two there seemed to be some danger of such sacrifices
becoming usual; but reason and humanity prevailed, assisted, perhaps, by
the fact that the closeness of the fraternal relation in China made it an
open question whether the deceased should be accompanied to his tomb
by wives or brothers ; while any relation who desired to honour the de
ceased in such a way, was liable to be invited to lead the way in person.
The forms in which the ambition of the encroaching States displayed it
self are characteristically Chinese. One symptom was to express curiosity
about the nine vases of Yu, the possession of which was associated with
that of the imperial sceptre ; another was to offer a sacrifice to heaven
and earth, or to the progenitors of the royal house, as to the sacrificer's
own ancestors. In the Tso Chuen, on the other hand, the loyalty oi
virtuous ministers frequently shows itself by their refusal to accept exces
sive honours offered on their arrival in other States. If odes proper to
the reception of the princes by the emperor are sung in their honour, they
take no notice, though they bow and respond politely when pieces of less
lofty import succeed. They " do not presume to seem as if they heard "
what it is contrary to propriety for them to acknowledge.
As in Scotland, the tradition of the royal supremacy retained just so
much vitality that the rebels were always anxious to obtain its nominal
support. One of the odes refers to the request of a usurper to be lawfully
invested with the fief which he intends to retain whether or no ; and in the
case already referred to, when the Imperial sacrifice to heaven and earth is
presumptuously offered by a prince of T'sin, his excuse is that a part of
the ancient patrimony of the imperial house has just been conceded to
him, including the spot where the rite used to be performed. After this,
the Prince of Loo applied for permission to offer a similar sacrifice, and,
by way of compromise, an imperial officer was sent from the court of Chow
to do it for him, whom he detained, in order to be able to repeat the
ceremony at discretion. In 720 B.C., and again in 618, an envoy was sent
from Chow to Loo asking for contributions to the king's burial, which is
equivalent to a demand for tribute.
It is curious to note how, in this state of general anarchy, a few rough
principles of feudal law struggled to the front, which are the more interest
ing to us because of their dim resemblance to the expedients spontaneously
adopted in mediaeval Europe. They were not inspired either by the
ancient classics or their modern admirers, but were the natural outcome of
the new state of things which required and developed an etiquette of its
own. Thus, if an army passed through neutral territory, usage required
that the prince (presumably an inferior) should man the walls of his capital
and send an embassy to ask wherein he had offended, otherwise he was
liable to be treated as an enemy. Chinese etiquette and knightly gener
osity were sometimes curiously mixed, as in the story of the small State of
Yen, which had been attacked by Tatars and effectively helped by Tse ;
upon which the Prince of Yen accompanies his departing ally beyond his
own frontier, a compliment properly due to the emperor alone. Tse there-
vol. 11. — p.c o

g2 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
upon makes the prince a present of the lands he has committed the
incorrectness of crossing, so as to put them both " in order."
It is unchivalrous to inflict a second wound, to take prisoner a man with
grey hairs, to fall upon the enemy in a defile, or to sound drums to attack
an unformed host. The Tso Chuen is full of stories of Chinese chivalry
and very Chinese magnanimity. Famous warriors are slain because they
cannot resist the appeal of an enemy to let him shoot first, and a rather
pretty bit of courteous bravado is described, in which two heroes, who are
being hotly pursued, shoot, not at their enemies, but at a passing deer, stop
courteously to offer the game to their pursuers, and then set off again, re
peating the process till the chase is abandoned. The mediaeval counter
parts of these heroes would, however, hardly understand the view of good
manners, which requires self-depreciation to be carried so far that the
warrior must always pretend politely to be the greatest coward present, like
the general praised by Confucius for saying, after he had brought up the
rear of a retreating force, " It is not that I dare to be last ; my horse would
r.ot advance." 1
The men of letters, of whom Confucius is the best known, and Mencius
the ablest representative, could scarcely be expected to exercise much in
fluence during these ages of turbulence. The mental activity of the class
was nourished from three sources : the doctrines of the ancient worthies,
whose ideal of a paternal democracy was preserved in the Shoo and the
earliest odes ; the satirical protests of virtuous ministers out of work, em
bodied in the later odes ; and lastly, the mental restlessness of their own
time, when political instability and social disorders had stimulated a new,
if somewhat niggling, intellectual activity, corresponding in circumstance
to that of the mediaeval Schoolmen, and approximating in its character to
that of the Greek Sophists.
It was the ambition of Confucius, Mencius, and the minor contempo
raries and disciples of both, to be employed as at once guide, philosopher,
and prime minister by the princes of their several States. But they were
aware that the attitude of an aspirant for court favour is not in itself a
dignified one ; and Confucius, by parables and historic examples, preaches
that the philosopher should take office if it is offered him, but should not
seek it for himself. " I am not concerned that I have no place, I am con
cerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not
known, I seek to be worthy to be known."2 If the princes and the emperor
•chose to govern according to the rules of propriety, the superior man might
take office under them ; but when bad government prevailed, the proof of
wisdom was for him " to roll up his principles and keep them in his own
breast," and be content if he could avoid disgrace.
It did not occur to the literati that the vacant mantle of Wu and Tan3
might fall upon a virtuous usurper who was neither a noble by birth nor a
scholar by training. They saw that it would be easy for any decently
1 Analects, vi. § 13. "lb., iv. § 14.
3 The personal name of the Duke of Chow was Tan.

FEUDALISM AND THE FALL OF CHOW. 83
governed State to seize the empire, but they did not see that first States
and then the Empire were to be had for the winning by military adven
turers without their help ; and that therefore, any adventurer, who would
restore enough of the good old usages to enlist the sympathy of the
masses, would have a chance of conquering power for himself and his
advisers without being orthodoxly " employed " at all.
Confucius, notwithstanding his pedantic enthusiasm for " ceremonies,"
was not wanting in practical ability, and tradition represents him as restor
ing the golden age of Yao and Shun in any town or government that was
entrusted to his care. But he could not adapt his doctrine to the changed
political conditions of the time, and his employers practically found them
selves without compensation for the sacrifices entailed by his scruples.
The Prince of Tse, pleased with some of his remarks, wished to give him
certain estates, and was dissuaded by his prime minister, upon grounds not
in themselves unreasonable. These scholars, it was objected, are imprac
ticable, arrogant, lavish in expenditure upon useless ceremonies, full of
frivolous " rules of propriety," to which statesmen have no time to attend.
" It would take generations to exhaust all that this Mr. Chung knows
about the ceremonies of going up and going down." 1 Moreover, as the
customs he wished to restore had fallen into disuse, to enforce them
would be an innovation tending to unsettle people's minds and cause dis
content. It speaks volumes for the faithfulness of the Chinese records that we can
really gather from them an intelligible summary of the curious intellectual
movement which gives its significance to this question about the employ
ment of sages, and the subsequent Burning of the Books. On the one
hand the champions of antiquity represented the principles of law and
order ; but the laws and the order belonged to a bygone state of things,
and their restoration would imply the destruction of the present. But the
state of things present in China from the 5th to the 3rd century B.C. was
not wanting in vitality any more than those days of feudalism from which
the kingdoms of Europe date their origin. If the power of Chow had
wasted, that of the various " presiding States " had increased, and in those
States where the titular prince was as feeble in proportion as the emperor,
the minor nobles were as ready to take the role of local maire de palais as
the various kings to usurp imperial prerogatives. It was the age of soldiers
and sophists and the event justified the forecasts of those statesmen who
felt that the impending re-organization of the empire must be effected by
force of arms, and that the orthodox school of literati were more likely to
hinder than help during ^the process. Neither they nor the philosophers
foresaw that the ultimate victory would rest with the latter, and that the
princes who reunited the empire would end by re-conquering 2,000 years
of more than imperial power for the pedantic Mr. Chung.
Several centuries had to pass before the beginning of this "revenge," and
1 C.C., vol. i. Prolegomena, p. 69,

84 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
the Taoist writers of the interval hardly exaggerate the ill-success which up
to this time attended on his teaching. One of them preserves an anecdote
which we should be glad to think authentic. A disciple once asked Con
fucius why he was sad, notwithstanding his own doctrine that one who
was contented with his lot, and prepared for the appointment of fate, had
no occasion to feel sorrowful. To which the sage replied that he grieved,
not for himself, but at beholding in his own State the neglect of all the
obligations of loyalty and charity which he had sought to teach for the
benefit of posterity. If, therefore, truth cannot prevail in one State for a
single lifetime, how, he asked himself, can it prevail throughout the world
for all the generations to come ? And at this thought he felt the sadness
of despair.
In a stock passage, repeated with variations in the works ascribed to
Chuang-tze, his sufferings and persecutions are enumerated : he was twice
expelled from Loo ; his tree (i.e. that under which he used to teach) was cut
down in Sung. Wei renounced him ; he was a failure in Shang and Chow,
and he passed seven days without food, surrounded by his enemies, in Chen
and Tsai.1 The same author represents him as saying to Lao-tze, " I ar
ranged the six Canons— of Poetry, History, Rites, Music, Changes, and
Spring and Autumn. I spent much time over them, and I am well ac
quainted with their purport. I used them in admonishing seventy-two
rulers, by discourses on the wisdom of ancient sovereigns, and illustrations
from the lives of Chou and Shao. Yet not one ruler has in any way
adopted my suggestions. Alas ! that man should be so difficult to per
suade, and wisdom so difficult to illustrate."2
These confessions of failure are put into his mouth by avowed critics ;
but their criticisms rest, partly at least, upon the fact that Confucius aimed
at regulating the States by his doctrines, and producing definite, practical
results, and that he had failed in his aim. The Taoists criticised his aim,
but their evidence is good for the fact, that throughout the latter years of
the Chow Dynasty " no ruler in any way adopted his suggestions." His
teaching became familiar to all the scholars of the empire, and exercised a
stimulating effect alike upon opponents and disciples. But it was not till
after the fall of Chow that the broad line which now separates him from
all the other writers of China was drawn and recognised ; while it was not
till the Sung Dynasty that Mencius also was promoted to a place apart as
the master's successor, and second to him alone.
1 Chuang-tzu, Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer. Tr. by'Herbert A. Giles, 18S9,
PP. IOO, 252. - 3 7*
2 lb., P. 188.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE HUNDRED SCHOOLS.
" There are 20,000 Ralph Waldo Emersons in China," said Mr. Burlin-
game, the United States Consul, to Mr. Motley, the historian, who records
with mild surprise, the "great admiration of the pigtails " expressed by all
who have become intimately acquainted with them in their own land.1 If
we had to describe what is at once best and most characteristic in Chinese
thought in terms of Western literature, we might say that the Chinese philo
sopher was a compound of Goethe, Emerson, and Madame de Genlis. He
has something of the calm, cool, rational humanity of the author of Faust,
and a great deal of the same faith, in the efficacy of social, literary, and
dramatic discipline, as a moral force, displayed by the author of Wilhelm
Meister. For the rest, his affinities with Goethe are included in his affini
ties with Emerson, whose obligations to the great German are not so easily
defined. Like Emerson, the Chinese sage has broad, vague sympathies
and intuitions of a righteous kind, and a strong, though hazy, apprehension
of the analogies and sequences in the world of nature and man. Like
Goethe, he has the courage of his discernment, and asserts the moral and
political importance of social minutiae ; but he dwells on them with an
affectionate diffuseness which suggests the court or the schoolroom rather
than the study. Confucius himself is credited with the observation that
the failing which may arise in connection with the practice of rites and
ceremonies is " fussiness," - while the corresponding virtue is a modest,
courteous, and respectful gravity. But there is nothing in the standard
classic texts to oblige the intelligent Chinese to exaggerate the importance
of forms. Confucius is quoted for the sentiment : Exceeding reverence
with deficient rites is better than an excess of rites with but little reverence ; 3
and enlightened conservatism can hardly go beyond a saying in one of the
most esteemed books of the Li Ki : " Rules of ceremony are the embodied
expression of what is right. If an observance stand the test of being judged
by what is right, although it may not have been among the usages of the
ancient kings, it may be adopted on the ground of its being right." 4 A
1 Correspondence of John Lolhrop Motley, 1889, vol. ii. p. 211. " It is strange what
stories they all bring back from the Celestials, — Iiichard Dana, Burlingame, Sir V. Bruce.
We have everything to learn from them in the way of courtesy. They are an honester
people than Europeans. Bayard Taylor's stories about their vices do them great injus
tice. They are from hasty impressions got in seaport towns. "
2 S.B., xxviii. p. 254. 3 lb., xxvii. p. 141. * lb., xxvii. p. 390.
85

S6 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
sentence or two further on this is explained : " Humanity is the root of
right, and the embodying of deferential consideration."
The effect of such consideration in mitigating the defects to which differ
ent classes are chiefly prone is acutely recognised. Propriety is the appli
cation of humanity to all the circumstances of life. " When the rich and
noble know to love propriety, they do not become proud or dissolute.
When the poor and mean know to love propriety, their minds do not be
come cowardly."1 The small man, when poor, may be tempted to steal, and
when rich, may proceed to deeds of disorder ; the rules of propriety serve
as dykes .to keep these opposite tendencies within bounds.
Confucius was, perhaps, the most acute of Chinese psychologists ; but
his popularity is a sign that his talent in this direction was appreciated.
Western moralists perplex themselves to find one formula for all right
doing, though it is known that the motives and propensities of indi
viduals vary. Confucius recognises three virtues — wisdom, magnanimity,
and fortitude ; but observes that " Some are born with the knowledge of
these (duties), some know them by study, and some as the result of painful
experience. Some practise them with the ease of nature, some for the sake
of their advantage, and some by dint of strong effort;" but if the know
ledge and exercise of virtue are attained at last, " it comes to one and the
same thing " 3 — to society as a whole, which enjoys the fruit of all objective
good behaviour.
Mencius occupies a place midway between Confucius and the various
phases of heterodox mysticism.
But there is nothing in the Analects to be compared to the fine, dis
interested and generous morality of a few passages in the later writer.
Mencius protests again and again against being consulted by princes as to
what will " profit " their kingdoms. He is willing to speak of benevolence
and righteousness, but not of profit ; for if that inducement is once recog
nised, " ministers will serve their sovereigns for the profit of which they
cherish the thought ; sons will serve their fathers, and younger brothers will
serve their elder brothers, from the same consideration ; and the issue will
be that, abandoning benevolence and righteousness, sovereign and minister,
father and son, younger brother and elder, will carry on all their intercourse
with this thought of profit cherished in their hearts. But never has there
been such a state without ruin being the result of it."3
He held that feelings of benevolence and the love of righteousness were
natural to mankind, and that it was the business of education and philo
sophy to disentangle and reinforce the proper nature of the mind. The
case for disinterested morality can hardly be put more compendiously than
in the following passage, which is one of those that earn for the author the
name of a Chinese Socrates : Mencius said, " I like fish and I also like
bear's paws. If I cannot have the two together, I will let the fish go and
1 S.B., xxvii. p. 65, xxviii. p. 2S4.
" Doctrine of the Mean, xx. §§ 8, 9.
3 Works, i. i.' i. § 4, vi. ii. iv. § 5.

THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE HUNDRED SCHOOLS. 87
take the bear's paws. So I like life, and I also like righteousness. If I
cannot keep the two together, 1 will let life go and choose righteousness. I
like life indeed, but there is that which I like more than life, and therefore
I will not seek to possess it by any improper ways. I dislike death indeed,
but there is that which I dislike more than death, and therefore there are
occasions when I will not avoid danger. If, among the things which man
likes, there were nothing which he liked more than life, why should he not
use every means by which he could preserve it? If, among the things
which man dislikes, there were nothing that he disliked more than death,
why should he not do everything by which he could avoid danger ? There
are cases when by a certain course men might preserve life and they do not
follow it ; when by certain things they might avoid danger and they will not
do them. Therefore men have that which they like more than life, and
that which they dislike more than death. They are not men of distin
guished talents and virtue only, who have this mental nature. All men
have it ; what belongs to such men simply is that they do not lose it."1
And he goes on to contrast the proper pride of a starving beggar, who
will not accept food that is offered to him with contumely, with the un
reasonableness of one not in urgent want who will accept large gifts stained
with impropriety and wrong.
The age of the Sophists in China may be said to extend from the 7th
century, when Lao-tze, the founder of Taoism — or the Doctrine of the Way
— was born, to the fall of Chow, or more accurately the rise of T'sin in the
middle of the 3rd century B.C.
Confucius was born 551 B.C.,2 and is said to have once seen Lao-tze, while
later writers are fond of inventing conversations between the two, in which
the honours of debate are awarded as their own personal sympathies
prompt. Mencius was born 371 B.C.3 Mih Teib, the founder of one of
the rival schools, flourished between the two, and Yang Choo, another
leader, was nearly or quite contemporary with Mencius. Chuang-tze, the
Chinese Hegel, flourished about half a century later, but must have reached
manhood before Mencius' decease ; Hui-tze, the most sophistical of all the
philosophers of the period, was contemporary with him. During all this
period teachers and disciples occupied themselves with discussions con
cerning the practice of charity and duty to one's neighbour, the identifica
tion of like and unlike, the separation of hardness and whiteness, and
about making the not-so so, and the impossible possible ; they examined
into the distinction of like and unlike, the changes of motion and rest, the-
canons of giving and receiving, the emotions of love and hate, and the re
straints of joy and anger,4 — till the philosophers themselves grew weary
and practical politicians became indifferent and exasperated.
It may be doubted whether any substantial addition has been made since
this period to the range of speculative thought in China ; the doctrines and
in most cases the works of these writers are still familiar to the learned ;
1 Works, vi. i. x. 2 Died 478 D.c.
3 Died 288 B.C. 4 Chuang-t?,u, pp. 214, 418.

88 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
and even those which are not officially recognised as books to be " taken
up " at the Government examinations, have a more than merely literary in
terest, because they show how comparatively slight are the widest differences
which spontaneously divide the beliefs and opinions of the black-haired
people. The teaching of Confucius himself may be summed up as incul
cating imperial democracy, filial piety, and the rules of propriety. The
conception of the duty of rulers and the duty of sons met with in his written
sayings did not originate with him, and rites and ceremonies undoubtedly
were observed long before his time; but it seems probable that he brought
into prominence the idea to which China owes, perhaps, most of her merits
and defects, — that, namely, of turning every moral precept into a rule of
propriety ; so that every point of conduct from least to greatest may be
embraced under the same set of regulations, while every virtue for which
occasion can be foreseen may be enforced as " proper," and vice discounte
nanced as unfashionable.
Confucius appeals to the reason and self-respect of individuals, while in
viting them to reform themselves, or to adhere spontaneously to the rules
of propriety ; the ruling classes of his day declined to accept the invitation,
and to such a flat rejection he had no answer ready. Active resistance or
vehement denunciation are courses for which no rules can be given, since
they imply the want of mutual respect and consideration upon which the
rules of propriety are based. The revolt of disinterested energy against
oppression finds no prompting in his works ; but Mencius, though not
himself a revolutionist, might have inspired revolutionaries, and perhaps
did so in Persia centuries later. l Potentially there was more difference
between Mencius and the master he acknowledged than between either of
them and Mih or Chuang-tze, but Mencius did not point to any practical
outlet for the feelings he may have stirred ; and public opinion in China,
as soon as it felt the need for an official philosophy, pronounced itself un
equivocally in favour of the tamer and less militant teaching of Confucius.
Disinterested logic-chopping, about the hard and white (to which a
philosopher of the Chao State devoted a separate treatise), the like and the
unlike and the identity of opposites, leads to no practical result, moral or
material. The Chinese comment on Hui-tze and his congeners is:
" Of what use was he to the world? . . . Alas for his talents. He is
extravagantly energetic and yet has no success. He investigates all crea
tion, but does not conclude in Tao. He makes a noise to drown an echo.
He is like a man running a race with his own shadow. Alas ! " 2 All that
portion of Western metaphysics— and it is surely not small — which might
be described in these terms, as the endeavours of a man to race with his
own shadow, was thus rejected in advance, after a brief trial, as of no
value to the Middle Kingdom. The chief object of the typical sophist is
'¦' to contradict others and gain fame by defeating all comers." But this is
" a dark and narrow way ; " Confucianists and Taoists agree in desiring a
1 See post, p. 128. 2 Chuang-lziij p. 454.

THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE HUNDRED SCHOOLS. 89
-doctrine which shall unite and harmonise instead of provoking controversy,
and they agree also in desiring to embrace ethics and physics alike in
their theory of the universe.
Yang and Mih, the founders of two opposite schools, which Mencius
regarded it as his mission to confute, had a narrower ambition, and their
leading principles applied only to human conduct. Yang's doctrine, as
stated by Mencius, is " Each one for himself," ^ and the reports of his
sayings (none of his writings exist) represent him as a despondent
Hedonist and Egoist. According to him the pains of life outweigh its
pleasures, and the imagined compensations of posthumous renown are a
delusion. Death comes soon or late to all, and the infamous tyrant who
is cut short in his sins may have got more enjoyment out of his life than
the ruler who has spent his days in hardship, toiling for the service of his
people " The virtuous and the sage die ; the ruffian and the fool also
•die. Alive they were Yao and Shun ; dead they are so much rotten bone.
Alive they were Keeh and Chow ; dead they were so much rotten bone.
Who could know any difference between their rotten bones ? While alive,
therefore, let us hasten to make the best of life ; what leisure have we to be
thinking of anything after death ? " 3
It is sometimes argued at the present day, in the West, that this
doctrine, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," must prevail both
logically and in practice, wherever the human taste for pleasure is not
-controlled by revealed religion. Confucius himself, as Dr. Legge ob
serves, though not irreligious, is emphatically 7/«-religious, and the same
remark applies to the mind of the people of whom Confucius is the chosen
teacher; yet so far from the crude Epicureanism of Yang Choo having
proved dangerously attractive, he alone has found no champions in pos
terity, and has added nothing to the common stock of Chinese ideas,
except so far as the Taoists have borrowed from him some phrases in
disparagement of laboured virtue.
The leading doctrine of Mih seems so entirely edifying that the general
reader will doubtless share the surprise expressed by Dr. Legge and the
Prince of Literature, Han-wen-kung, at the zeal with which he is denounced
by Mencius, and the habit, which seems to have been common, of
bracketing Yang and Mih together, as the authors of disturbing specula
tions. Mih's principle, according to Mencius, is : To love all equally, and
he objects to this as ignoring and denying the special regard due to a father
or a sovereign. But from the summary of his views given by a disciple,
it seems more as if it were the universality and reciprocity of such affection
than its equality which is meant to be insisted on. Mih does not wish
people to love their fathers less, but to love everybody else as well.3
In this he seems to go somewhat beyond Confucius, who explains "re
ciprocity," the one word upon which a rule of practice might be based, by
1 Works, iii. ii. ix. § 9, vii. i. xxvi. § I.
2 Life and Works of Mencius, by Dr. Legge (1875), p. 93.
3 Works, iii. ii. ix. § 9.

go OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
a negative version of the golden rule, not to do to others what we would
not have them do to ourselves. But Confucius avowedly regarded the
"loving of relatives" as the chief field for the exercise of the human
virtue of benevolence. When questioned concerning the principle of
returning kindness for ill-treatment, he said, " With what then will you.
recompense kindness ? Recompense injury with justice,1 and recompense
kindness with kindness."
Mih is said to have rebuked Confucius for standing in awe of great men,
and not blaming the officers of the State where he resided ; and the
criticisms of the existing state of society, in which Mih indulges, to show
the consequences arising from the want of universal love, might seem
somewhat offensive to the strictest champions of authority, since it is
from some points of view disrespectful to suppose that the duties of rulers
and subjects to each other are identical. Mih holds, with the orthodox
school, that it is the business of the sages to effect the good government
of the empire ; they must therefore examine into the causes of disorder,
and point out, with a view to their removal, whatever is injurious to the
kingdom. Under this head he includes, " The mutual attack of State or>
State ; the mutual usurpations of family on family ; the mutual robberies
of man on man ; the want of kindness on the part of the sovereign and
of loyalty on the part of the minister; the want of tenderness and filial
duty between father and son ; these, and such as these, are the things
injurious to the empire." 2
All this would be remedied if mutual love and mutual benefits were
universal, as they might become, Mih supposes, if the doctrine were
accepted by the superior class, and rewards and punishments enlisted on
us behalf. It is difficult, he admits, to get everybody to love everybody
else, but they might be induced to try if their rulers insisted on it ; and
having tried, they would need no further pressure to make them persevere,
because they would at once feel the advantages of the change. At this
point Mih lays himself open to condemnation as one of those who re
commend virtue for the sake of profit; and, in fact, his argument on
behalf of mutual benefits and love is distinctly utilitarian ; men are to>
love and benefit other people's parents, in order that other people may be
induced to love and benefit their parents.
When we consider the history of Confucianism, it cannot be said that-
Mih over-estimated the power of organized public opinion in producing
uniformity of belief; but he seems to have been at variance with the
Confucianists, not merely in wishing to denounce ministers and rival
princes more severely than they thought respectful, but apparently also in
contemplating an extension of the imperial prerogative, if the sovereign
once adopted his own system. In an essay on " The estimation to be
attached to concord," he is accused of asserting : " What the sovereign
1 Analects, xiv., xxxvi. §§ 2, 3. Cf. Plato, Republic, i. § 332 ff. The obvious Greek
view of justice is doing good to friends and harm to enemies.
- Mencius, Life ami Works, p. 102.

THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE HUNDRED SCHOOLS. 91
approves, all must approve; what the sovereign condemns, all must con
demn ; " and that the rule of truth and right must be accepted from him
as " Infallible head." He has already illustrated the possibility of induc
ing men to become universally affectionate by quoting the unreasonable
things done and suffered by officers and courtiers to please their ruler ;
and though we cannot suppose him to mean that universal hate would
be right if approved by the prince, it is possible that his teaching really
pointed towards political centralization and the establishment of a less
conservative and less anarchically democratic doctrine than that of Con
fucius. The politics of Hobbes and the ethics of Adam Smith are not
essentially incompatible. As a utilitarian, he advocated simplicity and
economy in funeral rites, while the aim of his adversaries was to restore
and amplify every ancient ceremony ; and it is possible that his contempo
raries had better reasons than we can now discern for regarding his school
with mistrust, such as would have been justifiable if its actual tendency
was to pave the way for Li-sze and the burner of the books.
The alternative is to believe that there was no really fundamental
difference between the two schools, and that their hostility was owing to
the jealousy felt by rival dialecticians for every one using a different
vocabulary from his own. This opinion seems to have in its favour the
high authority of Han-yu, who concludes his reconciliation of the two sets
of opinion : " The literati and Mih equally approve of Yao and Shun and
equally condemn Keeh and Chow ; they equally teach the cultivation of
the person and the rectifying of the heart, reaching on to the good govern
ment of the kingdom with all its states and families ; why should they be
so hostile to each other? In my opinion, the discussions which we have
are the work of their followers, . . there is no such contrariety
between the real doctrine of the two teachers." 1
It only remains for us to consider the doctrines of the philosophers who
had the audacity not to approve of Yao and Shun, and the ingenuity to
give profounder reasons for the paradox than those advanced by the
cynicism of Yang. Confucianism and the Classics agree in conceiving it
to be the business of the individual to rule his passions and regulate his
conduct so that his life may be in harmony with the permanent influences
of heaven and earth, and they agree in considering that the true wisdom
of the ruler of men lies, not in imposing his own will upon them from
without, but in enabling them to follow, with the tranquillity of external
nature, the satisfaction of their normal impulses and desires. The familiar
names of Yao and Shun represent to Chinese imagination the realization
of this ideal.
At the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. this version of the teaching
of antiquity had become again, thanks to the exertions of Confucius,
thoroughly familiar to the generations whose lot was cast in the historic
period known as the Warring States. The orthodox opinion was that
the Middle Kingdom had degenerated, for the third time, as it had done
1 Legge's Mencius, p. 120.

92 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
before, prior to the restoration of the virtues of antiquity under Thang
the Successful and the never-to-be-forgotten Wen and Wu.
There may have been some excuse for Confucius, who had, as it were,
like Hilkiah, re-discovered the Book of the Law, and might hope to
inspire a new restorer of the empire ; but when centuries had gone by
without this result doing anything but recede in probability, it was not
unnatural for men to say, If the doctrine of Yao and Shun presided over
the foundation of our State, Yao and Shun must have advised amiss or
the Commonwealth would not have reached this hopeless plight. But,
while Yang and Mih diverge from the ancient paths in directions which
bring them nearer to the erratic individualism of Western Europe, Chuang-
tze and the philosophic Taoism, of which he is the ablest exponent, differ
only from classic orthodoxy in going yet a degree or two beyond the point
at which this orthodoxy appears to us most characteristically and ex
clusively Chinese.
Chuang-tze represents the orthodoxy of his time as regarding the " dis
cussion of holiness and wisdom and the practice of charity and duty to
one's neighbour, as the utmost points attainable."1 The adherents of
Lao-tze, on the other hand, make it their aim " not to interfere with the
natural goodness of the heart of man." " The people have certain natural
instincts ; to weave and clothe themselves, to till and feed themselves.
These are common to all humanity and all are agreed thereon. Such
instincts are called ' Heaven-sent.' And so in the days when natural
instincts prevailed, men moved quietly and gazed steadily. At that time,
there were no roads over mountains, nor boats, nor bridges over water.
All things were produced, each for its own proper sphere. Birds and
beasts multiplied ; trees and shrubs grew up. The former might be led
by the hand ; you could climb up and peep into the raven's nest. For
then men dwelt with birds and beasts, and all creation was one. There
were no distinctions of good and bad men. Being all equally without
knowledge, their virtue could not go astray. Being all equally without
evil desires, they were in a state of natural integrity, the perfection of
human existence. But when sages appeared, tripping people over charity
and fettering with duty to one's neighbour, doubt found its way into the
world. And then with their gushing over music and fussing over cere
monies, the empire became divided against itself."2 At best "charity
and duty to one's neighbour are as caravanserais ; you may stop there one
night, but not for long, or you will incur reproach. The perfect men of
old took their way through charity, stopping a night with duty to their
neighbour, on their way to ramble through transcendental space."3
Sometimes Hwang-ti, the Yellow Emperor, is represented as the first
Taoist, and presiding over the Rousseau-like state of nature in which men
rejoiced before knowledge and law opened the gates of evil. Elsewhere
he is bracketed with Yao and Shun, as causing charity and duty to one's
1 Giles, Chuang-tzu, p. 262. J lb., pp. I07l io8
3 lb., p. 183.

THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE HUNDRED SCHOOLS. 93
neighbour to interfere with the natural goodness of the heart of man.
Thus these deluded princes " wore the hair off their legs in endeavouring
to feed the people, and exhausted their energies in framing laws and
statutes. Still they did not succeed." 1 They made it customary " to
honour the virtuous, advance the able, give precedence to the good and
useful." But with what result? " If the virtuous are honoured, emulation
will ensue. If knowledge be fostered, the result will be theft." 2 " It was
the appearance of sages which caused the appearance of great robbers." 3
"There has been such a thing as letting mankind alone; there has never
been such a thing as governing mankind," 4 and the abortive attempts that
have been made towards doing it by way of rewards and punishments,
have only deprived them of all leisure "for adapting themselves to the
natural conditions of their existence." " Only bald men use wigs ; only
sick people want doctors;" and if the State is in a healthy condition, it will
only want to be let alone.5
This thesis is insisted upon in a variety of forms, with copious illustra
tions ; the wisdom of statesmen is likened to the bootless ingenuity of
those who secure their valuables in corded trunks, with locks and bolts as
a precaution against thieves, but are at the mercy of the sturdy villain who
carries off box and bolts together. But the argument is evidently exagger
ated in protest against such teaching as that of a later philosopher,
Seun-king, who, unlike Mencius, insisted that the nature of man is evil,
and " self-denial and yielding to others are not to be found in it," °
and that it can only be converted to propriety and righteousness by the
influence of teachers and laws.
Notwithstanding the quaintness of the style, and the looseness of the
reasoning, it is evident that the ideas which Chuang-tze represents are
those of a rather aged society. It is always a sophisticated age that
believes in the prehistoric bliss of a state of nature ; the last word of philo
sophy is generally a doubt as to the possibility or the value of philosophic
certainty : religions begin by inculcating moral duties, and end by de
nouncing the worthlessness of mere morality, and the spirit of antinomian
quietism flourishes when the law and morality of a period have visibly
broken down. In the age of the Warring States, robbers of every degree
abounded, princes, ministers and heads of clans robbed one another, and
private adventurers who adopted the same career in some cases obtained a
renown co-extensive with the empire. At the self-same time, philosophers
and philosophic schools were multiplied, and sages sprang up everywhere,
and the people crowded after them excitedly. If the sages did not produce
the robbers, the robbers must have produced the sages, unless both alike
were the fruit of a general disregard of Tao.
Lao-tze teaches that perfection does not consist in charity and duty to
one's neighbour, but in yielding to the natural conditions of things.
" Therefore the truly great man, although he does not injure others, does.
1 Chuang-tzu, p. 123. 2 lb., p. 296. 3 lb., p. 113. * lb, p. 119.
* lb., p. 152. ° lb., p. 77.' He was in office 271-264 u.c.

94 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
not credit himself with charity and mercy."1 He does not seek wealth,
nor yet praise for disregarding it : perfect wisdom and virtue are spon
taneous, easy, and unmeritorious ; their crowning fruit is inaction and
indifference, the former so far as the man himself, and the latter so far as
his relation to external objects is concerned. Vice is not represented as
good, or virtue as evil; but laborious virtue is proved to be a mistake,
because the virtue of sages and sovereigns has not availed to keep the
world at peace. It is not a virtue, according to Chinese philosophers, to
labour in vain, and the Taoists, having satisfied themselves that action
modelled upon the examples of Yao and Shun was socially unfruitful, pro
ceeded to include abstention from such vain efforts in their ideal of personal
morality. Men have the same duty to the State as to their own body, and
the weariness which comes of much serving is an offence against the
latter. " Let there be absolute repose, and absolute purity ; do not
weary your body, nor disturb your vitality, and you will live for ever. . . .
Cherish and preserve your own person, and all the rest will prosper of
itself." 2
The original idea of philosophic Taoism was no doubt that to apprehend
all truth it was necessary to cultivate a state of intellectual passivity, in
which the superficial distinctions between being and not-being disappear.
But the disappearance of these distinctions has a further result ; for if Not-
being is the same as Being, why should not inaction produce the same
results as action, or rather, since inaction is the higher and purer state,
results much greater and more valuable ? The Classics themselves
recognise the idea of immaterial influences radiating from the person of the
virtuous sovereign, and the occult action attributed to the possessors of
Tao is scarcely more mysterious than that ; but while the Confucianists
practically contemplate only an imitative or contagious virtue, among those
¦exposed to the harmonising and instructive influence of a Yao or Shun, the
Taoists, having lost hold of the limitations of sublunary experience, see
no reason why the inactive master of the Way should not remove moun
tains and live for ever, as well as ramble at pleasure in transcendental
space. Chuang-tze himself does not indulge in much more magical formula?
than Hegel, and his anarchism is only a degree more radical than that of
the Shoo-King. He looks upon life and death as immaterial, because both
befall in the course of nature, and neither affect the eternal essences of
things. Nature, as the great parent, comes in for some of the filial piety
which in China is independent of special gratitude for any benefactions
over and above the first great gifts of life and nurture. A son must go where
his parents bid him, and to a philosopher there is nothing terrible in the idea
that his flesh and bones will be scattered over the fair surface of the world,
to reappear in fresh combinations. "For those who accept the pheno
menon of birth and death in this sense, lamentation and sorrow have no
place," even at the death of friends ; and the desire " to prolong life, and
1 Chuang-tzu, p. 204. 2 ib.t p. ,27-

THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE HUNDRED SCHOOLS. 95
to do away with one's end," incurs the condemnation due to one who
misunderstands his destiny.1
The later Taoists, who practise legerdemain and seek for elixirs of
immortality, grossly misunderstood the doctrine of their masters ; 3 but
•abstract philosophy is not the forte of the Chinese, and it is easy to see
how the doctrine, that mind is superior to all the restraints imposed by
phenomenal existence, and that the preservation of the body is at once a
duty imposed by nature and proof of conformity therewith, — should lend
itself to the corrupt reading which has enjoyed a vogue equal in duration if
not in extent to that of the established orthodoxy.
Philosophic Taoism is cultivated now mainly by the literati who do not
take office, or by officials who have retired ; and as the only criticism of any
weight which can be directed against orthodox Confucianism proceeds from
this quarter, it is notable that the critics plead always for less, not different
government, and undervalue the charms of office instead of competing
for it. The opinion of the school on this subject was epigrammatically
expressed by Chuang-tze, when the prince of Ch'u sent two high officials to
invite him to undertake the administration of the State. He was fish
ing when they reached him, and, without turning his head, said to the
envoys : " I have heard that in Ch'u there is a sacred tortoise which has
been dead now some 3,000 years, and that the prince keeps this tortoise
carefully enclosed in a chest on the altar of his ancestral temple. Now
would this tortoise rather be dead and have its remains venerated, or be
alive and wagging its tail in the mud ? " "It would rather be alive," re
plied the two officials, "and wagging its tail in the mud." "Begone,"
cried Chuang-tze ; "I too will wag my tail in the mud." 3
On the whole, the criticism, assigned to Confucius by this author him
self, can hardly be improved upon. "These men," he said, "travel be
yond the rule of life. I travel within it ; consequently our paths do not
meet" 4 China has two ideal characters — the sage or scholar in office, who
" turns night into day in his endeavours to compass the best ends," and
the sage or scholar in retirement. Confucius wishes the sage to be em
ployed, though admitting that it may be his duty to retire if debarred from
executing his virtuous intentions. The Taoists, on the other hand, see in
this daily and nightly toil itself a divergence from the true way, and regard
the retired scholar as having chosen the better part.
Buddhism as a religious philosophy, appealed to the same class of minds
as Taoism, and its greater vogue in China since its introduction is only
owing to the fact that it provides for the " retirement " of persons who are
neither scholars nor sages. Buddhism, like Confucianism, has something
1 Leaves from my Chinese Scrap- Book. F. H. Balfour (1887), p. 89. Lieh-tzc, the
author of this sentiment, was a disciple of Lao-tze, and flourished circ. 400 li.c.
2 " How excellent is it," exclaimed Yen-tzu, " that from all antiquity death has been
the common lot of men ! It is rest for the virtuous and a hiding-away of the bad. " lb.
p. 92. Cf. in the Egyptian ritual the conclusion of an address to the dead : " Thy ex
istence is at rest."
3 Chuang-lzu, p. 217. * lb., p. 84.

96 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
for all classes, but it provides no formula for practical every-day life ; and
as the Chinese, like their national teacher, are practical and positive rather
than devout, all their serious interests are regulated by Confucius, and only
the idle after-beliefs, superstition pure and simple is left for Buddha.
The two social ideals of Chinese thinkers are anarchy with the ills of
nature tempered to the masses by imperial benevolence, and anarchy with
the ills of nature tempered to the wise by philosophic quietism. And the
course of Chinese history for more than 2,000 years has been so much in
fluenced, positively and negatively, by this fact, that it can hardly be passed
over in the most summary account of the nation.

CHAPTER IX.
THE USURPA TION OF TSIN AND THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS.
The fall of the Empire, as distinct from that of the State of Chow, practi
cally dates from the fall of Tsao and Wu (two of the States founded some
six centuries and a half before by King Wu) in 485, an event which imme
diately preceded the regime of the Warring States. This period (480-221
B.c) begins just two years before the death of Confucius, and the co
existence of political and philosophic discord which characterized it was a
matter of general observation. The official history of the first Han Dynasty
observes : " Amid the disorder and collision of the Warring States, truth
and falsehood were still more in a state of warfare, and a sad confusion
marked the words of the various scholars." x
The great agent in the revolution which threatened to destroy the in
fluence of the literary class and the whole classic literature, was the State
of T'sin, which included virtually all the settled part of China west of the
State of Chow, and the eastern reach of the Yellow River in its great bend,
while the borders of Chow itself were narrowed by grants made to T'sin of
the oldest possessions of the ruling house. This cession encouraged the
prince to commit the tentative usurpation of offering a sacrifice to Heaven
with imperial ceremonies and establishing a bureau of state historians.
But it was not till the first half of the 4th century B.C. that T'sin became
a formidable candidate for the reversion of the empire. From the 8th
century onward the north and western States had been disturbed at in
tervals by incursions of the Tatars. The troops of T'sin, in consequence
of their position on the frontier, thus became practised in war, and the
State came to be regarded by all the neighbouring princes as the most
desirable of allies and the most dangerous of foes.
The reign of Heaou (360-336 B.C.), whose son and successor took the
title of king, was memorable for other innovations, which ended by in
troducing private ownership of land and abolishing the Chow system of
common fields. Apparently the revenue of T'sin was found to be in
sufficient as the power and ambition of its rulers grew. The State was
large, but less populous than its neighbours, and wide tracts of land there
fore remained uncultivated between the village enclosures. Chang-yang,
the duke's minister and adviser, whose name deserves to be recorded, since
China owes to him her first experience of an agrarian difficulty, was an
able and original, if unscrupulous statesman ; and he conceived the idea of
1 Legge's Confucius (6th Ed.), vol. i. p. 3.
VOL. II. — P.C. 97 H

98 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
increasing the fighting population of the State, by abolishing the Chow
system of grouping the village households for purposes of cultivation
and taxation, while retaining the corresponding arrangement for military
levies.1 Separate ways were made between the homesteads, and each plot was
taxed separately. According to some authorities the taxes were raised so
as to amount to one-third of the whole produce, but the change seems to
have been more radical than a mere increase of taxation, and it is pro
bable that the innovation really consisted in the substitution of a fixed
antl uniform contribution for a proportion of the varying annual crop.
Such a change has always been found profitable by financiers and burden
some by the agricultural masses, and it is certain that the measures taken
were unpopular, and gave rise to disturbances which called for severe
repression. As an attraction to settlers from other States, land was ceded for the
first time in absolute ownership 5 vacant lands were sold in freehold, and
both these classes were freely saleable, which the village allotments never
had been. With increase of population, of course inequality and distress
began ; war impoverished some and enriched others, and after a time we
find a Chinese author lamenting : " The owner of the land is one, but
those who cultivate it are ten." 2 Another complaint to the same effect
was that T'sin " neglected the fields and taxed men," 3 the taxes on persons
being largely increased, while the State ceased to provide all its subjects
with lands out of which they could both live and pay the ordinary land
tax. The holders of large estates brought the poorer cultivators into a
state of dependence by paying t'he personal tax for them, and thus assum
ing towards them the place of t'he State and the rights of a political
superior : a transaction which has far more to do with the origin of rent
than the competition of cultivators for land of a superior quality, but
which in China has always been discouraged instead of favoured by the
laws.4 In De Mailla's account of the innovations of Kong-sun-yang, as he calls
him, he is said to have grouped the families by fives and tens for the
1 Memoire sur la condition de la propriite lerritoriale en Chine depuis les temps anciens,
par M. Ed. Biot, Journ. As., 3me ser., vol. vi. pp. 255-336. This article is based on
an abridgement of Ma-twan-lin, then (1838) in the possession of M. Stanislas Julien. The
first section of the original encyclopaedic work, Wen-hian-thong-khao, contains all the
historical authorities available in the writer's time, relating to land-holding and taxation.
It consists of seven parts, two of which deal with the history of irrigation works and
military colonies ; and the remaining five extend over 300 pages of Chinese text, which,
as M. Biot observes, would present great difficulties to a translator, because some of the
passages cited are both obscure and mutilated. Until some devoted student accom
plishes the translation, a really critical treatment of the subject is impossible. An article
by M. Sacharoff (translated in the Arbeiten der Kaiserlichen Russischen Gesandschaft zu
Peking uber China, by Dr. Carl Abel and F. A. Mecklenburg) goes over the same
ground, and though he does not give his sources, no doubt he also relies mainly on Ma
twan-lin. 2 J. Sacharoff, Ueber das Grundeigenthum in China, p. 11. Arbeiten der K. Russ.
Gesandschaft zu Peking uber China.
3 Journ. As., loc. cit., p. 271.
4 Cf. Ta Tsing Lu Li, cap. xcv. , and post, p. 363.

THE USURPATION OF T'SIN.

99

maintenance of order by mutual responsibility ; idleness was punished, and
skilled artisans-were exempted from the great corve'es. The tutor of the
heir apparent was put to death when the latter joined the party of mal
contents. The separation of families was forbidden during the father's
lifetime, and scattered families were brought together and settled in town
ships, so that, according to this version, the tendency of his measures was
to restore rather than to abrogate the system of Chow. It was said at
this time that while T'sin possessed a fifth of the territory of the empire,
it only possessed a tenth part of the troops, and the prince was accordingly
urged by his admirers to encourage the growth of population, and to avoid
the dangerous hostility of neighbouring States by extending his possessions
only towards the west at the expense of the barbarians.
De Mailla's original is so late that his authority cannot over-ride that of
any earlier texts, and, in fact, the policy here attributed to Chang-Yang
bears a suspicious resemblance to that of a less notorious worthy. The
Tso Chuen records a successful attempt made in the 6th century B.C., in
the small State of Ching, to restore the system of common fields, and,
though at first the people murmured at having " to count their fields and
villages by fives, and accept a mutual responsibility," within three years
the burden of the popular songs was changed, and they hailed the inno
vating minister as their own and their children's benefactor.1 This ap
pears to have been the last of the thoroughly popular restorations of the
Tsing system, though it is difficult to tell how far the unpopularity of
Wang Mang 2 was due to his attack on private property, and how far to
his other measures. But from the days of the T'sin innovations onwards
it seems to have been usual for those politicians who aimed at the
aggrandisement of the central authority to disguise their encroachments
by a professed desire to restore the ancient forms of communistic agri
culture.3 The distrust, which seems to have been generally felt towards
such professions, rested, so far as we can judge, upon a correct impression
that local self-government was a better protection to the proprietary rights
of individuals and communities than any extension of the imperial
authority, which was never likely in practice to stop short at enforcing the
joint enjoyment and use of village lands.
Early records of primitive custom sometimes omit to mention just those
points which are of most importance, and so are treated as too notorious
to need description. And this is probably the reason why, as already
observed, there is nothing in the Chow Li concerning any redistribution
of the village lands at intervals, in the manner recognised by most archaic
systems of village ownership.
1 Legge, C.C., v. pt. ii. p. 557.
2 Vide post, p. 116.
3 The last experiment of the kind was made as recently as 1724, when a colony of
fifty Mantchus, fifteen Mongols, and fifteen Chinese was establislied in accordance
with the " Rites of Chow. It was given up at the beginning of the next reign in
1736, but its failure or abandonment of course proves nothing as to the merits of the
system, which demands, above everything, a thoroughly homogeneous population.

10o OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
According to Ma-twan-lin, under the first three dynasties, all lands
belonged to the State, but not to the Emperor, whose authority over the
feudal princes was like theirs over the cultivators on their appanages. The
T'sin were the first to make one man master of everything, " but when
they did away with the ancient redivisions, and abandoned the ownership
of land to the people, so as to form a divisible inheritance, they gave
what they had no right to give, and took what they had no right to take."
In other words, the clan or primitive community was conceived as having
a title to the land it occupied, superior to that of the sovereign or any
individual tenant of his. But Ma-twan-lin obviously regards the joint
ownership, subject to redistribution, of the village lands as the essential
feature of the Chow system ; and he writes as if this feature had survived,
as it easily might, the more conventional nine-square division of the Tsing.
With the institution of private property in land, the State ceased on the
one hand to consider itself responsible for providing each individual with
land enough to live by; and at the same time it ceased to regulate its de
mands upon the taxpayer by his known circumstances and ability. From
the days of Yu the land was divided into nine classes, which were taxed
in proportion to their fertility; but T'sin "neglected the fields and taxed
men," making the same demands upon all to the ruin of the poorest.
We cannot pretend to trace in detail either the course or the conse
quences of this economic revolution. It was the first example of an
experiment made more than once in the future, an attempt to combine
political absolutism with economic individualism, or in other words to
subvert at once the two mainstays of social life and morals in China. The
heroes of these adventures have never won the final victory, which carries
with it the right to tell their own story to posterity ; but the judgment
due to the unsuccessful revolutionaries is implied in that passed upon the
system which they failed to subvert ; and those who value what survives
in modern China from the ritual of Chow will join in the orthodox con
demnation of the Emperor, who, in the year 255 B.C., founded the famous,
ifshortlived, dynasty of T'sin.
The final conquest was effected almost without a blow ; but as usual, the
date given for the accession of the dynasty somewhat anticipates the full
appropriation of all imperial prerogatives, and it was not till 221 B.C. that a
new beginning was appointed for the year, and black chosen as the
imperial colour. Tsin-chi-hwang-ti, the emperor famous as builder of
the Great Wall and burner of the books, was said to be the son of a
merchant, whose slave the reigning prince carried off when enceinte ; and
the tradition represents the consensus among historians to disparage the
legitimacy of his pretensions.
It is curious that the dynasty, which is best known for the destruction
of books, should be remarkable for the number of its inscriptions, eight of
which have been preserved.1 The first of them has been attributed by
1 Les Inscriptions des T'sin, par M. Edouard Chavannes. Journal Asiatique, neuvieme
serie, vol. i. (1893), PP- 473"521-

THE USURPATION OF T'SIN. IOi
Chinese scholars, whom M. Chavannes follows, to the King of T'sin, reign
ing 327~294 B.C. Its authenticity is not quite unimpeachable, but the
balance of opinion is in its favour. It denounces the king of Chow for
his improprieties, cruelty, and impiety, and represents T'sin as only defend
ing itself and its altars against unjustifiable aggressions. A suspicious
phrase is, " He came to take possession of my rampart and my new
ditch ; " but it is possible that a wall against Chow was begun by an
ancestor of the emperor, who completed the wall against the outer
barbarians. The second inscription, by Tsin-chi-hwang-ti himself, speaks of his
ordering the measures and standards of length and capacity to be made
uniform. It is dated the 26th year of his reign, when he had "united all
the earth in his hand, so that the lords and the black heads enjoyed great
tranquillity." The third inscription disappeared in the 10th century a.d., but was
engraved on stone by a scholar, who had received a cast of it from his
teacher. The remaining inscriptions, by the son and successor of the
founder of the dynasty, and by his officers in his praise, are preserved by
Ssema-tsien. They are diffusely eulogistic, and suggest that the flattering
premier, Le Sze, had a hand in their composition. If the black heads
had been as virtuous and prosperous as the inscriptions declare, it would
hardly have been necessary to tell them so at such length.
The fall of T'sin was caused, in the belief of posterity, by ten follies,
among which the erection of the Great Wall was counted. But parts of it
had been erected by different States before Hwang-ti's accession, and if he
had given no other offence to the prejudices or principles of his subjects, it
is not probable that he would have been condemned merely for completing
and connecting the defensive works already begun, the need of which, as
already observed, had been specially felt in his own State.
The first, though by no means the last, of his unpopular innovations was
the extension of the new agrarian system of T'sin to the rest of the empire.
It will be remembered that the founders of the Shang and Chow dynasties
both came forward, not as destroyers or innovators, but as restorers of the
good old usages of the past, which had fallen into neglect in the degene
rate hands of the last kings. There was probably no constitutional
principle better known to the mass of black-haired politicians than those
regulating a change of dynasty. That T'sin should take the empire was
one thing, that it should impose its own new laws was another, and there
can be no doubt that every student of Chung and Mang1 who had learnt
to reverence the divine memory of the Duke of Chow, would be prepared
to denounce as sacrilegious any proposal to abolish the common fields, the
hamlet enclosures, with their virtuous ditches, and the time-honoured
system of moderate tithing. What had provoked discontent, even among
the unlettered and scattered population of T'sin, was likely to rouse
rebellion elsewhere ; and while the scholars would be as usual on the side
1 Chung-ne and Mang-tze are the short native names for Confucius and Mencius.

102 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
of the populace, the nobles and princes would not be on the side of the
Crown ; for every State had the memory of some injury or affront to redress,
to say nothing of the humiliation inflicted on all the princes, who found
themselves deprived of their virtual independence by the restoration of a
central authority.
Bearing these facts in mind, we shall be able to understand the pro
ceedings of the great council held in the year 212 B.C., as reported by the
historian, Ssema-tsien, a century later, and translated by Dr. Legge in
the prologomena to the first volume of his invaluable edition of the Chinese
Classics. In the eighth year after his recognition as emperor, and the
thirty-fourth of his reign as king of T'sin, Chi-hwang-ti gave a feast to the
seventy great scholars of the empire, whose official position very likely
gave the suggestion of the still famous Hanlin College, founded at the
beginning of the Tang Dynasty. The emperor was of course concerned to
conciliate these potentates, and Chinese usage warranted him in expecting
more or less extravagant compliments from his guests.
The first to speak was one of his chief ministers, who, after giving a
glowing picture of the happy tranquillity of the whole empire, concluded :
"This condition of things will be transmitted for 10,000 generations.
From the highest antiquity there has been no one in awful virtue like your
majesty." The emperor was pleased with this flattery, but one of the
great scholars, a native of Tse — the latest and most formidable of the
rivals of T'sin — advanced and said : " The sovereigns of Yin and Chow,
for more than a thousand years, invested their sons and younger brothers,
and meritorious ministers, with domains and rule, and could thus depend
upon them for support and aid; that I have heard. But now your
majesty is in possession of all within the four seas, and your sons and
younger brothers are nothing but private individuals. . . . Without
the support (of relatives), where will you find the aid which you may
require? That a state of things not modelled from the lessons of
antiquity can long continue ; — that is what I have not heard. Tsing (the
former speaker) is now showing himself to be a flatterer, who increases the
errors of your majesty, and not a loyal minister."
The question here raised was not new. The creation in the 12th
century B.C. of hereditary appanages, held by branches of the ruling house,
was an innovation, to which the dynasty of Chow was supposed to have
been indebted for much of its success, though it is sufficiently obvious now
that the troubles of the Warring States were due to the resulting multipli
cation of feudal princes. In consequence of a palace plot by a step
mother, an oath was taken in Tsin, at the beginning of the 7th century
B.C., that they would not maintain in the State any of the sons of their
marquises ; and from that time, for nearly a century, according to the Tso
Chuen, " there were no families in it which were branches of the ruling
house." The consequent inconveniences are not described, but we are
told that a later duke l sought to avoid them by giving offices of various
1 605 B.C., Tso Chuen, C.C., v. p. 291.

THE USURPATION OF T'SIN. 103
degrees to the sons of his ministers, so as to create an artificial set of
branch families. The end of this State, however, did not form an inviting
precedent, for after figuring as one of the presiding States and a rival of
T'sin, Tsoo, and Tse, about 400 B.C., Tsin had been broken up into three
marquisates and lapsed into insignificance. Under these circumstances,
it is not surprising that politicians, of what we may call the new Imperialist
School, suspected the provincial scholars of invoking the authority of the
ancients, to weaken the imperial power, by restoring the disorganization
and turbulence of the period of feudalism.
The emperor, we are told, invited others of the assembly to express their
opinions, upon which the premier, Le Sze, spoke as follows : " The five
emperors were not one the double of the other, nor did the three dynasties
accept one another's ways. Each had a peculiar system of government,
not for the sake of the contrariety, but as being required by the changed
times. Now, your Majesty has laid the foundations of imperial sway, so
that it will last for io,ooq generations. This is indeed beyond what a
stupid scholar can understand. And moreover, Yue only talks of things
belonging to the three dynasties which are not fit to be models to you.
At other times, when the princes were all striving together, they en
deavoured to gather the wandering scholars ahout them ; but now the
empire is in a stable condition, and laws and ordinances issue from one.
Let those of the people who abide in their homes give their strength to
the toils of husbandry, and those who become scholars should study the
various laws and prohibitions. Instead of doing this, however, the
scholars do not learn what belongs to the present day, but study antiquity.
They go on to condemn the present time, leading the masses of the
people astray and to disorder.
" At the risk of my life, I, the prime minister, say, — Formerly when the
empire was disunited and disturbed there was no one who could give
unity to it. The princes therefore stood up together; constant references
were made to antiquity to the injury of the present state ; baseless state
ments were dressed up to confound what was real, and men made a boast
of their own peculiar learning to condemn what their rulers appointed.
And now when your Majesty has consolidated the empire, and distinguish
ing black from white has constituted it a stable unity, they still honour their
peculiar learning and combine together; they teach men what is contrary
to your laws. When they hear that an ordinance has been issued, every
one sets to discussing it with his learning ; in the court they are dissatis
fied in heart ; out of it they keep talking in the streets. While they make
a pretence of vaunting their master, they consider it fine to have extra
ordinary views of their own, and so they lead on the people to be guilty of
murmuring and evil speaking. If these things are not prohibited, your
Majesty's authority will decline and parties will be formed. The best way
is to prohibit them. I pray that all the records in charge of the historio
graphers be burned, excepting those of T'sin; that with the exception of
those officers belonging to the Board of Great Scholars, all throughout the

io4 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
empire who presume to keep copies of the Shi-King, or of the Shoo-King,
or of the books of the hundred schools, be required to go with them to
the officers in charge of the several districts and burn them ; that all who
may dare to speak together about the Shi and the Shoo be put to death,
and their bodies exposed in the market place; that those who make
mention of the past so as to blame the present, be put to death along with
their relatives ; that officers who shall know of the violation of those rules
and not inform against the offenders, be held equally guilty with them ;
and that whoever shall not have burned their books within thirty days
after the issuing of the ordinance, be branded and set to labour on the wall
for four years. The only books which should be spared are those on
medicine, divination, and husbandry. Whoever wants to learn the laws
may go to the magistrates and learn of them." The imperial decision was
"Approved." As the possession of a common writing and a common literature has
always been one of the strongest influences at work in maintaining the
unity of the Chinese Empire, it is curious that this attack upon letters
and the literati should have been made in the interests of centralization.
But the same minister who is made answerable for the burning of the
books addressed another memorial to the emperor, when it was proposed
to banish all natives of other States, in which he urged the importance
of employing all the talents of the empire. So that it is probable that
after all his ambition was, rather to substitute a hierarchy of practical
statesmen for the arrogant and unworldly students of antiquity, than to do
away with the peculiarly Chinese notion of absolute government, subject
to the advice of intelligent ministers.
The condemned books included the popular poetry and sacred liturgies
as well as the laws, the legends, and the history of antiquity. So far as
Confucius can be said to have founded a religion it was the religion ot
letters and propriety, and this religion was to be outraged by a new Inqui
sition. Martyrs were not wanting. The persecution cannot have raged
for more than three years, but on one occasion 460 scholars were buried
alive for having the forbidden books in their possession, and the emperor's
eldest son, who had ventured to intercede for them, was banished to the
Great Wall. Three years after the passing of the edict the emperor died,
and his successor, after a troubled reign of another three years, was
succeeded by the unlearned but good-natured soldier of fortune who
founded the Han Dynasty, and took the title of Emperor, 201 B.C.
His first proclamation was brief and unargumentative : he came to
deliver the empire from the despotic yoke of T'sin ; all the laws of the late
dynasty were repealed, and in their place three penalties alone imposed,—
for murder, death, and proportionate punishment for assault and theft.
Ten years' proscription and the fall of the persecuting dynasty were not
likely to obliterate from the minds of the surviving literati those compen
dious texts which describe the judgment of heaven upon bad rulers. The
emperor was promptly memorialized by a scholar who stood high in his

THE USURPATION OF T'SIN. 105
favour, to restore the ancient books. " What do I want of your books? "
he asked with some scorn. " I have conquered the empire on horseback and
made myself your master without any help from Shoo or Shi." To which
of course it was replied, that the empire may be conquered from the back
of a horse, but that it must be preserved and administered by the help of
wisdom and justice, as the disasters of the house of T'sin abundantly
showed. The temporary misunderstanding which had led to the scholars
appearing as the champions of feudalism was cleared up, and they began
again to take the position which they regarded as their due, as advisers
and spiritual auxiliaries of the strongest depository of temporal power.
One traditional classification gave as the four sources of disorder " equal
queens "(or the concubine put on a level with the first wife), "equal sons"
(younger or half-brothers put on a level with the heir), " two governments "
(i.e. favourites on a level with ministers), and " equal cities," x or provincial
towns allowed to rival the capital. The orthodox doctrine was distinctly
in favour of a strong central government, and though it was also in favour
of a benevolent government, the Han Dynasty soon came to understand
that they could afford not to oppress the masses of the people, if they
could succeed in abolishing the feudal aristocracy and establish themselves
as its only heir. The soldierly emperor paid a solemn visit to the grave
of Confucius and rendered imperial honours to his memory (195 B.C.),
" which had never been done before ; " he employed scholars to prepare
official treatises on government, music, tactics, and the like, and his
successors not only had the ancient texts restored, edited and commen
tated by the learned, but also listened favourably to the advice of scholars,
who wished to have all doctrines save those of Confucius proscribed, and
to have the doors of office closed against all who had not passed through
the schools established for the study of orthodox learning.
The T'sin Dynasty was allowed to bear all the odium of the change from
a feudal to a centralized government, but the Han emperors surrendered
none of the ground gained by their unpopular predecessor. They made
no attempt to restore the feudal system, the destruction of which was
counted among the ten great follies of the fallen dynasty. On the contrary,
they were on their guard against the growth of a new aristocracy of royal
kinsfolk, and when the great emperor Wu-ti was warned that many princes
of the imperial house held territories of 1,000 li in extent, he issued an
edict (128 B.C.), compelling all the feudal nobles to divide half their domains
equally amongst their younger sons, leaving only the other half to the
eldest, whose portion would be again subdivided in the next generation.
It is more difficult to estimate the effects of another of the ten follies,
the erection of the Great Wall of China ; but it is remarkable to find this
once admired contribution to the wonders of the world, uniformly con
demned by native writers as a costly and injurious blunder. Baron von
Richthofen has suggested that the strength of this barrier contributed
indirectly to the fall of Rome ; that the Tatar hordes which for centuries
1 C.C., vol. v. p. 71.

106 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
had been seeking an outlet on the east, finding their path blocked in that
direction, turned their faces westward, and gave the first impetus to the fall
of that human avalanche, which afterwards swept like a flooded mountain
torrent over Europe.1 There is something fascinating in trie hypothesis
which establishes an unconscious link between the histories of the greatest
empires of the East and West; and there can be little doubt that the
military revival of the Chinese empire was one of the causes which contri
buted to make the line of least resistance to barbarian invasion point
Romewards. But the disapprobation with which serious Chinese politicians always
regarded the Great Wall was not based merely on' prejudice against its
maker, nor entirely upon the useless and oppressive expenditure connected
with it; and the safety of the Chinese border province after its erection
was not believed to be owing to its protection. The safety of the frontier
depended on the existence behind it of a force strong enough to take the
offensive against an insolent neighbour, and the early Han emperors used
the wall rather as a base for their own campaigns in ' Central Asia than as
a rampart behind which to shelter themselves from attack. The feeling of
the historians in regard to frontier defences is like that concerning the
varying preferences of successive emperors for the Western or the Eastern
court, as the cities of Si-ngan-fu and Loyang (the modern Honan-fu) are
respectively called. Loyang means luxury and love of peace in the heart
of the kingdom, and probable encroachments from the neglected enemy on
the borders. Si-ngan-fu means a strong government, and a ruler prepared
in his own person to stand between the peace-loving masses and the pre
sumption of barbarians beyond the pale.
Something of the same idea no doubt underlies the dictum of the Li Ki :
"Many ramparts in the country round and near (its capital city), are a
disgrace to its high ministers and great officers." With slight variation the
experience of Chow repeated itself so often in the revolving centuries that
it became an historical commonplace at last that the safety of a province
depended on the army, or the general, and not upon the wall. The decay
of a dynasty was always at hand, when the emperor sought ease and luxury
in the centre or southern provinces, instead of heading campaigns himself
beyond the frontier, or giving peace to the frontier provinces by his
vicinity. In general, it may be doubted whether the usurpation of T'sin, and the
accession of the Hans, did not together do more to restore the monarchy
to the position it occupied under the first kings of Chow than to alter or
revolutionize the national constitution. T'sin-chi-hwang-ti certainly aimed
at reviving the ancient Empire in fact and name, and the performance of
the fong and chan ceremonies, with which he vainly sought to consolidate
his dynasty, was evidently regarded as meritorious, when effected by the
emperor Wu in no B.C. The correct form of these ceremonies was not
easy to ascertain, owing to their being normally repeated only after an
1 China, i. p. 445. 2 S.B., xxvii. 92.

THE USURPATfON OF T'SIN. 107
interval of centuries. The account of them by Ssema-tsien no doubt em
bodies all that was ascertainable by the learning of his age. For the fong
ceremony the Emperor ascends a high hill towards the east, raises a mound
upon it, invokes the gods, and adjures them to favour the Hundred
Families. Then he descends ; a space is levelled on some adjoining hill,
and there he invokes the gods of earth, and this completes the chan
ceremony, the idea clearly being to worship heaven upon a site naturally
and artificially raised, and earth upon one artificially levelled.
Han-wu-ti chose an auspicious time for his celebration ; two years
before (112 B.C.), he passed by Loyang, and granted thirty li of ground
and the title of Prince of Chow, to a representative of the Chow Dynasty,
to enable him to accomplish the sacrifices to his ancestors ; x and for a
Chinese ruler to deal in this way with his predecessors is always an indica
tion that the " Appointment of Heaven " has declared unequivocally in his
favour. After the important ceremony,2 the emperor bestowed an ox and
ten measures of wine on every group of 100 hearths, while orphans, widows,
and octogenarians received a piece of silk and cloth. The places through
which he had passed were also exempted from corvees, and those in the
neighbourhood of the place of sacrifice from all taxes, to make up for the
expenses thrown on them by the royal progress. A general amnesty was
also proclaimed, and all charges which had been pending for two years or
longer were to be dropped.
1 Journ. TV:. Or. Soe, iii. p. 59, 2 lb., p. So.

CHAPTER X.
REIGN OF THE HAN D YNASTY.
(206 B.C-229 A.D.)
The disorders which had preceded the rise of the Han Dynasty had im
poverished all classes, except the speculative traders, whose nets generally
secure the largest haul when cast into the troubled waters of a long war.
Prosperity was long in returning. The able-bodied men had been taken
off to the army, the old and young were employed in carrying food; the
rich drove in bullock-carts for chariots, and even the emperor could not
afford a team of horses to match. Corn was scarce, and monopolists drove
up prices, holding out for a rise till rice was 3^. a pourtd and famine was
in sight.
The traders, who alone had prospered during the war, were held answer
able by the impoverished people for their sufferings, and the soldier
Emperor found it popular as well as convenient to levy additional taxes
upon this class in order to keep them down, while they were also forbidden
to wear silk, or drive in carriages ; and when a few years later, these
restrictions were withdrawn, the sons of traders were still disqualified from
holding official rank.1 At the same time money was raised by selling
titles of honour and rank to rich persons willing to contribute grain for
the public service, while rich criminals were allowed to commute their
penalties for a fine. By this means the burdens of the cultivators were
relieved so that the peasants no longer had to sell their crops at half value,
or to borrow money at usury, or to sell their children or the ancestral home
stead to swell the gains of unprofitable idlers.
With the return of peace abundance reigned again. Village elders ate
meat and drank wine as in the golden age of Wen and Wu ; the Govern
ment treasuries were full, the public granaries were well stocked, the im
perial storehouses were crammed to overflowing, so that the grain grew
mouldy because there were none to eat it, though horses were again plenti
ful and might be seen in droves along the high road. With the growth of
wealth, luxury, extravagance, and ambition revived, and the military ex
peditions, which covered the Han emperors with glory, and spread the
sway of China from the Corea to Khotan,2 prepared the dynasty's decay.
The Hans are the only Chinese emperors who seem to have aimed at
extending their authority by the ordinary arts of war and conquest. The
1 Gems oj Chinese Literature. By Herbert A. Giles, 1884, p. 57.
2 The first embassy to this kingdom was sent in the reign of Wu-ti, 140-87 B.C.

REIGN OF THE HAN DYNASTY. 109
123rd book of Ssema-tsien's history, which treats of the trading expedi
tions and commercial wars of the first Hans, during the years between
140 and 97 b.c, has been translated,1 and gives a very graphic, circum
stantial and, to all appearance, accurate account of the Chinese campaigns
with the kingdoms east of the central desert and the motives which led
to them. The chief of these kingdoms, Ta-ouan and Ou-sun, were identi
fied by Klaproth approximately with the modern districts of Hi and Fer
ghana. They were reported to be populous, civilized, resembling the
Han in their government, and to contain rare and valuable commodi
ties. It was therefore represented to the emperor that they might be in
duced by presents to bring the homage of their commerce? Caravans were
accordingly sent to explore alternative routes ; those to the north of the
desert were rendered insecure by the Huns and other barbarians, while to
the south food and water were lacking, so that half the members of a
single expedition perished.
The number of caravans sent, notwithstanding these difficulties, varied
from five to ten in a year, the longest journey occupying nine years.
Embassies were exchanged, and the Emperor of China was particularly
anxious to obtain horses of a rare breed from Ta-ouan. But the Western
kingdoms had apparently as much trade as they wanted, and believed the
Hans to be too far off to be dangerous, so even food was refused to the
Chinese caravans. " One was discredited in the exterior countries." 3
The Huns were near and formidable, so traders protected by the Huns
were secure, while "those of the Hans, on the contrary, only obtained food,
baggage animals and admission to the bazaars by producing their wares." 4
Finally war was declared, and expeditions sent both against Ta-ouan
and Ou-sun. The Chinese, who seem to have begun where Western
kingdoms end, went through the experience common to Europeans who
indulge in the luxury of little wars ; they suffered much loss and privation
before learning how to manage their campaigns,5 but when at last they
succeeded in bringing an army to the gates of the hostile capital, their
victory seemed certain. After a siege, the capital hoped to escape a
capitulation by offering to send the horses previously refused and by
appointing a ruler approved by the Chinese. The army was evidently
thankful to accept any approach to submission, and the minor kingdoms
on the road also rendered homage. This successful expedition lasted four
years, till 97 B.C., and was comparatively inexpensive.
The pains taken in the vain endeavour to open up a trade route to
India made it possible to introduce a less valuable commodity, the wor
ship of Fo ; 6 but the drain upon the resources of the country was so great
that the spreading reputation of the Sons of Han proved to be too dearly
bought. To provide for the army the currency was debased, and even
1 Nouveau Journal A siatique, 1828, vol. ii. p. 418.
2 lb., p. 427. 3 lb., p. 435- " Ib-> P- 438-
5 Cf. Giles, Gems, pp. 68-72.
6 M. Terrien de la Couperie now dates the first introduction of Buddhism to China
before the accession of the Hans.

no OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
victories proved expensive because every band of tribute-bearers was en
tertained at the Imperial cost, and dismissed with presents far exceeding
the value of their own offerings. This magnificence, which was politic in
a power aiming only at an honorary protectorate over the whole continent,
was found by the weaker princes of the line to be so heavy a burden, that
it was once seriously proposed to decline to receive an envoy from the
Huns on the ground of expense. And when the records of the Han
Dynasty were closed, the chief moral which they seemed to posterity to
point was a warning against military ambition and the sacrifice of the in
ternal administration to a brilliant foreign policy.1
It was the boast of the Tang Dynasty that it accomplished by peaceful
policy more than was attempted unsuccessfully by the warlike Hans. The
ideal of the native statesmen was a government too formidable to be
attacked and too prudent to be aggressive ; and the Hans, notwithstand
ing their brilliant campaigns in Central Asia, were exposed to incursions
on the east and south of so formidable a character that in one case the
people of a border principality were removed en masse to a more sheltered
settlement north of the Kiang.
Trade with foreigners is said to have been carried on at Canton since
176 a.d.,2 but it is doubtful from what distance the traders may have
come. The Cingalese told the ambassador of the Emperor Claudius that
they traded with the Seres, but as they described the people so designated
as tall, with blue eyes and red hair, the name in this case clearly does not
refer to the Chinese.
The rumours about the remote people of silk makers, which had
reached the Western world in the days of Augustus, refer to the China of
the Hans ; and we can j udge from them how far the native historians are
from exaggerating the strength and fame of the empire. While intelligent
criticism at home was pointing a remorseless finger at social and eco
nomic evils, which, however real, are only explicitly recognised as such
by a comparatively advanced civilization, the inquiries of distant savants
like Pliny and Ptolemy, elicited nothing but praise of the powerful,
wealthy, and humane community.
Sir Henry Yule has brought together all the passages in classical litera
ture referring to the Seres, and his summary of their substantial purport
may be accepted as a fair account of what well-informed Europeans knew
of China 1,800 years ago.3 " The region of the Seres is a vast and popu-
1 The authority of the Book of Odes might have been, and no doubt was, quoted to
this effect :— ^
" Do not try to cultivate fields too large,
The weeds will only grow luxuriantly ;
Do not think of winning people far away,
Your toiling heart will be grieved." (C. C, iv. 1. Shi King, p. 157.)
2 Chinese Repository, 1883. p. 365.
3 Cathay, and the Way Thither. Introduction, p. xii. Pliny, who specially mentions
the iron (Hist. Nat., xxxiv. 41, § 4), says that the Seres, though civilized, do not seek for
trade, but wait for it to come to them (lb., vi. 20, §2)-a remarkwhich would have been
true of China at almost any other period except that when it was written.

REIGN OF THE HAN D YNASTY. 1 1 1
lous country, touching on the east the ocean and the limits of the habit
able world, and extending west nearly to Imaus and the confines of
Bactria. The people are civilized men, of mild, just and frugal temper,
eschewing collisions with their neighbours and even shy of close inter
course, but not averse to dispose of their own produce, of which raw silk
is the staple, but which include also silk stuffs, furs, and iron of remarkable
quality." For a report like this to travel from the inaccessible kingdoms
of Central Asia to Imperial Rome, it is obvious that China must have been
well known in regions that were in constant communication with the wes
tern parts of Asia, accessible to the commerce of the Mediterranean. The
impression so transmitted was vague, and liable to mistakes of the sort
embodied in Virgil's pretty confusion of the mulberry leaves with the
silkworms ; x but it rested upon a ground of real knowledge, and it is
significant to note that the widest-spread rumours spoke of a civilized
and industrious trading population rather than of a mighty emperor.
For descriptive purposes it is natural to regard the Han Dynasties as
forming a single period, and this period is so much foreshortened by its
remoteness in time that we do not at once remember that it represents an
interval like that which separates the accession of Queen Victoria from
that of Henry V. Evidently, therefore, there is room for a good many
discordant estimates of the national prosperity to be appropriate in their
turn. The reign of the warlike Wu-ti was marked by the spread of luxury;
many wives, many horses, many clothes, and a thousand costly ornaments
seduce the prince to abandon the antique simplicity of his ancestors. A
memorialist in a subsequent reign (48 B.C.) reiterates the same complaints,
and is particularly scandalized at the thought of horses eating grain and
growing so fat and frisky that they have to be taken out to exercise merely
to subdue their spirits, and this while the emperor's subjects are dying of
hunger. " Is this to be the father and mother of his people ? Is great
heaven blind ? "
These remonstrances are not mere literary exercises in the manner of
Mencius ; they have a direct bearing on the most crying evils of the times,
and the chroniclers always record whether any action was taken in conse
quence. The men of letters for the most part remained faithful to the
belief that poverty and wealth were equal and correlative evils ; but there
were not wanting apologists for the existing state of things, who forestalled,
after the Chinese fashion, most of the arguments, which have been in
vented since, in praise of the social utility of wealth. Poor people, it was
said,2 who have no property of their own, are able to take a farm from the
rich and live as tenants. In time of want and famine, the poor apply to
the wealthy for a loan of bread or money. Shopkeepers, artisans, and all
the minor industries are supported at the expense of the rich. They make
special contributions to the revenues of the State, officials apply first to
1 Georgics, ii. 121. Pliny calls silk a wool growing on trees.
2 Ueber das Grundeigenthum in China, J. Sacharoff. Arbeiten der Russischen Ge
sandschaft, p. 14, tr. by Abel and Mecklenburg.

ii2 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
them for assistance, and thus they are the support of high and low alike.
It is true they enjoy great advantages, but when their labours and sacri
fices are considered, it will be admitted that they deserve a proportionate
reward ; even if some act as heartless oppressors of the poor, that must be
dealt with in other ways, not by depriving them of property acquired by
their personal exertions ! If the modern Chinese undervalue the deserts
of the trading class, it is evidently not for want of having had the opposite
doctrine set before them.
In the year 163 B.C. an imperial manifesto, issued in a season of scar
city, suggests among the points to be considered by the contrite rulers:
" Is there unoccupied land or a surplus population ? Is agriculture
neglected for commerce? Is too much grain used for making wine?"
To guard against the neglect of agriculture, the rite of the Imperial plough
ing had already been revived (178 B.C.), and the classical doctrine as to the
connection between crime and poverty found an able exponent in Cha'o
Tso', a general who fell a victim (155 B.C.) to the hostility of the nobles,
provoked by his steady resistance to any revival of the feudal system.
"Crime," he says, "begins in poverty; poverty in insufficiency of food;
insufficiency of food in neglect of agriculture ; " x and he dwells upon the
moralizing effect of the tie which holds a man to the soil from which he
draws his nourishment in exactly the same spirit as the modern Chinese
scholars, whose conversation is reported by M. Eugene Simon.2 Jealousy
of the merchant's larger profits is frankly expressed and justified ; these
men rear no grain crops, their women spin no silk, yet they draw from the
labour of others rewards far exceeding those which compensate the hus
bandman for his necessary toil. The love of gold, silver, and jewels seems
to this early economist to be the root of all social evil. " Man makes for
grain as water flows down hill. Gold and jewels are easily portable,
bribing thieves and traitors ; grain and cotton come from the earth by the
labour of man, and a few hundredweight are more than a man can carry.
They offer no inducement to crime. Therefore the wise ruler holds grain
in high honour, but degrades gold and jewels." Faith and honour, that
would be proof against bulky bribes 3 in common articles of use, yield to
the offer of a handful of valuables, warranted to buy luxury in any quarter
of the globe. The conclusion, that grain should, as far as possible, be
treated as the staple currency is not quite satisfactory. But there is an
element of truth in the somewhat Lycurgean theory, and at all events the
influence of kindred ideas on the economic development of China has been
too considerable to be ignored.
So far as can be ascertained, the price of grain, as expressed in copper,
after the first few years of distress, was exceedingly low during this whole
period; sometimes lower even than the authorities approved. It was
1 Gems of Chinese Literature, by Herbert Giles, p. 74.
2 La Cite Chi noise, p. 91.
3 Cf. Pope, Moral Essays, iii. 48-74 : —
" Oh that such bulky bribes as all might see,
Still, as of old, encumbered villainy ! "

REfGN OF THE HAN DYNASTY. 113
actually proposed, in the middle of the 2nd century a.d., to issue coins of
a higher value than those in common use, as a device for raising prices.
And, though the remedy is singular, experience shows x that the value of
the lowest monetary unit is not without effect upon the price of commo
dities. We are indebted to Ma-twan-lin for an account of the annual expenses
of a small cultivator under the Haus. The State of Wei seems to have
been fortunate in the number of paternally disposed princes to whom the
government was committed. The minister of one of these makes the
following report, near the middle of the ist century B.C. : "A householder
undertakes the cultivation of 100 mow; the gross return of grain per mow
is 1 \ chi, giving a total of 150 chi. One householder represents five persons.
Each person consumes ih chi monthly ; from the produce of his 100 mow
the cultivator pays his taxes with 15 chi (i.e. 10 per cent, of the gross pro
duce of his holding), with 90 chi he has the food for his family, and there
remain 45 chi, which, at 30 tsien the chi, are worth 1,350 tsien ;2 the cere
monies celebrated in every village at spring and autumn cost 300 tsien, and
the surplus serves to clothe the five members of the family." 3
Other authorities cited by Ma-twan-lin estimate the taxation of a family
under the Hans at 200 tsien only, and it is possible that the imperial
authorities did not exact more, the rather that the commentator clearly
considers the Wei cultivator to have been hardly treated. Ma-twan-lin, in
a note on this passage, estimates the cost of clothing at 300 tsien per head,
and taxes the budget with a deficiency of 450 tsien, or about 6 shillings ;
and he exclaims against the impossibility of clothing being so cheap as to
allow the cultivator to live with so narrow a margin. The learned ency
clopaedist, however, probably failed to allow for the lower value of money
at the earlier period; and so far from pitying the poverty of the Wei
cultivator, we are compelled to wish that an equally satisfactory budget
could be drawn up for the agricultural millions subject to British rule in
India. The standard of comfort was no doubt higher in China than Egypt,
where the loin cloth, which formed the labourer's ordinary dress, would
certainly not cost the wearer 5^. a year. But the Egyptian estimate of the
cost of a labourer's maintenance was a little over i| centimes, while the
Chinese budget gives at the rate of 2\ c. per diem for each member of
the family ; and if the lower sum did not imply penury, the higher is not
incompatible with comfort. No allowance is made for the flax, silk, and
other plants cultivated to provide clothing materials, nor for the fruit,
1 In October, 1884, when it was proposed to revive the old laws allowing municipal
authorities to fix the price of bread in France, the fact that the sou oi five centimes is
the smallest coin in current use, was alleged as one reason which prevents small reduc
tions in the price of bread following a fall in that of corn or flour. And one difficulty in
the way of raising the wages of journeymen bakers in England, is that the smallest
possible advance in the price of bread (£</. per loaf) is out of all proportion too much to
cover the increase of wages asked for.
2 According to M. Biot, 22 fr. 80 c. of modern French money.
3 Journ. As., 3meser., vol. iii. p. 456 "•
VOL. II. — P.C. '

n4 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
vegetables, pigs and poultry reared by every cultivator of ioo mow, and
serving both to vary his diet and increase his surplus of saleable pro
duce. The development of slavery in China dates from the Han Dynasty, and
the impoverishment of the lower orders through war and famine. The in
jurious results of this change were more felt by the State than by the enslaved
individuals. The slaves, of course, paid no land tax ; and as noble proprie
tors and officials were also exempt, it was estimated that about a quarter of
the whole population made no contribution to the revenue. On the con
trary, the maintenance of the State slaves (condemned criminals, or rebels)
was a heavy burden in times of scarcity, and we hear at intervals of their
emancipation in numbers, avowedly to relieve the community from the ex
pense of their support. One of the minor dynasties, in the 6th century,
improved upon this somewhat ambiguous boon by enfranchising all public
slaves of the age of sixty -five years and upwards.1
Besides the case of those who had lost their liberty through poverty,
there was also a large and increasing class who had lost their lands from
the same cause. The historians use a special term signifying agglomeration
to describe the accumulation by one owner of more land than he could
cultivate himself; and it was by these great land-owners that the free, but
landless cultivators were reduced to a state of semi-feudal dependence, the
landlord taking half their crop in consideration of his engaging to pay their
taxes. But as it was contrary to propriety for the imperial taxes to exceed
a tithe, it was clearly incorrect for prasdial lords ^to derive five times as
much revenue from the same source. And hence the encroachments of
the agglomerators, even when tolerated for a time, never ceased to be re
garded as unlawful and inexpedient. As a rule, taxation was light under
the Hans ; and this moderation had the incidental advantage of discourag
ing fraudulent understatements of population, so that the census returns of
the period may be relied on.
Shortly before the innovations of Wang-mang, the cash in the imperial
treasury amounted to about 2,000,000, according to Ma-twan-lin, who
thought the total small. But as the proportion of the revenue which con
sisted of contributions paid in kind, went on diminishing, and was greater
under the Hans than at any later time, the two millions would represent a
much larger gross revenue then than in the 13th century. The custom of
benevolent English landlords of making " returns '' out of rent was followed
in regard to the taxes by popular princes. A year's taxes were frequently
excused if bad weather or epidemics had impoverished a neighbourhood,
while in prosperous times the same grace was accorded as often as the
treasury could afford the indulgence. An accession or marriage was con
sidered a suitable occasion for remitting taxes, as well as for amnestying
prisoners under sentence for minor offences.
In other respects China has seldom approached more to the ordinary
1 Mfmoire sur la condition des esclaves et des serviteurs gagls en Chine. E. Biot,
fourn. As. (March, 1837), p. 255.

REIGN OF THE HAN DYNASTY. .115
type of oriental monarchy than during the decadence of the Han Dynasty.
The influence of eunuchs, and of the favoured relations of successive em
presses, gave occasion to frequent complaints. The bonds of alliance, it
was said, were preferred to those of blood ; and the wealth accumulated by
the favourite of a single reign reached such an amount that its confiscation
seemed rather a judicial penalty on extortion than a fresh oppression. By
the time the dynasty was thoroughly enfeebled and discredited, it was over
thrown for a time by Wang-mang, a usurper who reigned from 9-23. a.d.,
after ten years of virtual supremacy, during which he had followed the
policy of the unjust steward at the expense of the titular sovereign.
Like most of the Chinese rulers who have got a bad name as innovators,
Wang-mang professed to aim at restoring the Rites of Chow ; and Chi
nese scholarship points to passages in that sacred text which were interpo
lated by him to justify his measures. As prime minister, he had advised
the Empress, to whom he was related, and by whose favour he had been
raised to power, to reduce the expenses of her household, while he himself
set an example of economy and simplicity, distributing large sums of money
to the poor, and ceding to them 3,000 acres of his own land for cultivation.
He showed his respect for antiquity by proposing, in our year one, to revive
the names of the ancient astronomical clans J as honorary titles for the im
perial board of mathematicians. And his first extraordinary measures for
raising money might have seemed to be dictated by a real concern for
the welfare of the impoverished masses.
He prevailed upon the empress to allow him to open the tombs of the
royal family, as well as of wealthy private persons ; and he issued an edict
forbidding in future the burying of valuables in the graves of the deceased.
He offended the moral sense of the community by confiscating the treasures
brought to light by his sacrilegious researches, but the prohibition itself
was only slightly in advance of the time. In the reign of Hwan-ti (147 a.d.)
a benevolent officer opened his father's grave in order to give away the
buried treasures it contained during a time of distress, and the fact is re
corded without censure. It was contrary to the national creed to dedicate
to the unconscious spirits of departed ancestors valuables which could be
converted into food for men in want ; and besides, when distress was com
mon and intense, the tombs were certain to be violated by force. This was
the case with the tomb of the emperor just mentioned ; and the dynasty
which succeeded the Three Kingdoms in 275 a.d., is said to have intro
duced the custom, still in use, of burning paper representations of valu
ables, instead of burying the things themselves in graves, so as to avoid the
double sin of extravagance and sacrilege.
But to return to the innovations of Wang-mang. He altered the currency,
introducing gold, silver, tortoise-shell, and cowries as mediums of exchange,
in addition to copper ; and when an immense quantity of counterfeit coin
was issued in consequence, a hundred thousand forgers were condemned
1 The Hi and Ho, who were to be put to death if the eclipses were not correctly fore
told.

rr6 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
to slavery by a single edict.1 Besides his interference with the currency,
he imposed vexatious duties on trade. The taxes on salt, iron, and wine
had been abolished by an emperor nearly ioo years before; but when a
local governor proposed to restore order in his district by reducing or
abolishing the unpopular imposts, Wang-mang turned upon him and con
fiscated his wealth, which proved to be very great. He then directed his
attention to the official class generally, and to all those whose riches ex
ceeded the lawful profits of their ostensible callings, confiscating four-fifths
of all the treasures thus discovered. He also forestalled Wang-ngan-chi, the
great innovating financier of the Sung Dynasty, by a scheme for State bank
ing; and the edition of the Chow Li which was published under his in
spiration contained a spurious passage, making it one of the duties of
the treasurer to fix the rate of interest en loans in accordance with the
requirements of the State.
At the same time he attempted to restore the old system of common
cultivation, and the tsing, which were called " imperial fields," because of
an edict by which he proposed to abolish private property in land, and to
claim again for the emperor the role of universal landlord. No subject
was to be allowed to hold more than a certain amount of land, and the ex
cess was to be forfeited to the Crown, and allotted, as required, to the vil
lages ; while the sale of land was forbidden that all might retain the means
of subsistence. The edict was repealed after three years, and it was said
that Yao and Shun themselves could not have restored the common fields;
the very rivers had changed their beds 3 since the days of old, and how
could bygone customs be renewed ?
One token of Wang-mang's unpopularity was the fact that the copper
money issued by him used to be re-cast secretly in the form of the favourite
coinage of Wu-ti ; and the use of this money came to be regarded as a
tacit profession of loyalty to the dynasty by which it was originally issued.3
Wang-mang was finally defeated and put to death in 23 a.d., the Han
dynasty restored, and its lustre revived by a succession of able and' en
lightened rulers. Between 25 and 89 a.d. three emperors of good repute
occupied the throne,4 though the second, Han-ming-ti, is held to have
tarnished his glory by formally introducing the worship of Fo (Buddha),
in 65 a.d. Official corruption was dealt with in the most efficient manner by
raising the salaries of responsible officers, while oppression or peculation
were punished with instant dismissal, or death. For more than half a
1 Large round numbers are understood as approximative by Chinese writers and
readers, and so are not exactly a sign of untrustworthy or mythical narrative. The
number of the condemned was large enough to oblige Wang-mang to relax the law on
the subject of marriage. (Biot's Le Tcheou-li, i. p. 307.)
2 One of the changes in the course of the Yellow riiver took place 39 B.C.
3 An issue of alloyed silver provoked the epigram : —
"The yellow bull has a white belly,
The five-tchu pieces ought to return ! "
(Catalogue of Chinese Coins, p. 383. Cf. Journ. As., I.e., vol. iii. p. 461.)
4 The first was said in his youth (during the usurpation) to have earned his living by
selling corn. (Journ. R.A.S., N.S. xx. p. 257.) After the restoration, the dynasty was
known as the Eastern Han.

REIGN OF THE HAN DYNASTY. 117
century the country enjoyed one of those periods of peace and prosperity
which recur often enough in the history of China to furnish each great
dynasty with a standard of comparison within itself.
In 78 a.d. financial difficulties were beginning to be felt again. Grain
was dear and scarce, and money depreciated, so that the land tax was re
quired to be paid in pieces of silk or cloth. These troubles, however, might
be regarded as the price paid for the military glory which, at this time, was
rewarding the campaigns of Pan-tchao. In the year 72 this officer was
sent, for the first time, to restore the federal supremacy which China had
obtained over the princes of Western Asia under the first Han Emperors.
Only eight of these princes, beginning with Kashgar, had acknowledged
themselves tributary ; but in 94 a stronger force was despatched, and, with
the help of the eight allies, victories were obtained over the Northern Huns,
and so much of Bokhara conquered that fifty different princes submitted,
and sent hostages to China. All Asia, from the sea of Japan to the Cas
pian, was tributary to the Middle Kingdom.
Pan-tchao despatched one of his lieutenants to reach the " western sea "
and proceed to Ta Tsin, that great western empire of which dim rumours
had arrived as far as China. It may be doubted whether the western sea
reached by this officer was anything more distant than the Caspian, or at
most the Persian Gulf; at any rate, the Persian accounts of the long and
dangerous journey between them and Rome served to deter him from exe
cuting his commission in full. Persia, however, was more or less subdued,
and it is evident from native sources that China was at this time willing,
and even anxious, to enter into direct commercial intercourse with the
Roman empire, and was only hindered from doing so by the jealousy of
the Parthians and other nations in Western Asia, who feared to lose the
profitable business of intermediaries. The Chinese had heard of the coral
fisheries of the Mediterranean, and the Romans wished to obtain raw silk
for their dyers and weavers to manipulate. An embassy, sent by Marcus
Aurelius, reached Southern China by way of the sea and Tonquin in 166,
and the arrival of other ambassadors, described as bringing " tribute," is re
corded in the next century. But Roman commerce seldom outstripped the
march of Roman armies, while China was never at a loss for markets nearer
home ; so the chances of closer intercourse between the two empires were
never realized.
The emperor Ho-ti, in whose reign this great expedition was undertaken,
is also known as the patrcn of Pan-hoei-pan, a sister both of the general
Pan-tchao, and of an eminent historian Pan-kou. Pan-hoei assisted her
brother in his literary labours during his life, and completed his historical
manuscripts after his death. She also wrote on her own account a curious
treatise on the duties of her sex, the humility of which is perhaps less
profound than it seems, for when emperors issue proclamations about their
own lack of virtue, a learned lady with pretensions to good manners could
hardly do less than claim for her sex to " occupy the lowest rank in the
human species." Pan-hoei, at all events, was not without honour in her own

n8 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
country ; all the treasures of the Imperial Record Office were placed at her
disposal, and the history of the first Han empire, which she published in
her brother's name, and for which she received quite half the credit, still
ranks among the best of the ancient historical works which survive. She
occupied a special post as instructress of the Empress and the other ladies
of the palace, and her example must have produced an appreciable
number of femmes savantes, as she thinks it necessary to explain in her
treatise that a lady who is always quoting the Classics will not be thought
agreeable in society, and that she should keep her learning in reserve till
it is asked for.1
The best known of Chinese institutions, the system of literary examina
tions, dates from the Han Dynasty. The revival of letters was followed,
or rather accompanied, by the restoration of schools, where the literati
were once more free to discuss the principles of government. In 170 B.C.
Wen-ti repealed the law of T'sin, which made it a crime to speak against
the government, on the ground that without free criticism the emperor
could not tell what to amend in his administration. The existing schools
seem to have enjoyed some degree of official recognition, as Wu-ti was
asked, in 140 B.C., to cause all officers to be taken from them. The
Imperial college, called Thai-hio, however, was not founded till 124 B.C.;
it was to admit fifty scholars, 18 years old or upwards, chosen from lists
presented by the Minister of Rites on the one hand, and the provincial
officers on the other.2 These pupils were regularly examined and pro
moted according to merit. Admission to these scholarships, as they may
be called, was by nomination ; but unsuitable or incapable candidates were
dismissed at the first examination, and the patron was punished for a bad
choice as for corruption in levying the taxes.
The men of letters of the Han period were by no means mere formalists.
The " Record on the subject of Education," which forms one of the books
of the Li Ki, is evidently the work of a time when the theory and practice
of education were a subject of discussion and reflection. There are, it is
said, teachers who content themselves with multiplying questions, and
humming over the tablets which they see before them, who speak of the
learner's making rapid advances and pay no regard to their "reposing"
(in what they have learnt). The authors of the Record do not value this
merely mechanical instruction or "cram," the effects of which, moreover,
are superficial and evanescent. Their description of the superior man
who is fit to become a teacher of others 3 is mature and graphic. " In his
teaching he leads, and does not drag ; he strengthens, and does not dis
courage ; he opens the way, but does not conduct to the end (without the
learner's own efforts). Leading and not dragging produces harmony.
1 It is matter of record that the historian was an excellent housekeeper, and her
portrait, given in M. Pauthier's description of ancient China, is decidedly pretty, pi. 54,
2 Essai sur T Instruction publique en Chine el de la Corporation des lettrts. E. Biot, 1845,
3 S.B., xxviii. p. 87.

REIGN OF THE HAN DYNASTY. 119
Strengthening and not discouraging makes attainment easy. Opening the
way and not conducting to the end makes (the learner) thoughtful. He
who produces such harmony, easy attainment, and thoughtfulness may be
pronounced a skilful teacher."
Different studies require different methods, and so do different students ;
the teacher must be able to adapt himself to both ; but after all, much
rests with the pupil, a good learner will profit more by a bad master than
a bad one by the most diligent teacher. The ideal is reached when the
"pupil and master talk together, and the subject is explained."1 . . .
" The master who skilfully waits to be questioned, may be compared to a
bell when it is struck ... let it be struck leisurely and properly, and
it gives out all the sound of which it is capable. . . . He who gives
(only) the learning supplied by his memory in conversations is not fit to
be a master. Is it not necessary that he should hear the questions (of his
pupils) ? Yes ; but if they are not able to put questions, he should put
subjects before them. If he do so and they then do not show any
knowledge of the subjects, he may let them alone."
The language of these passages is difficult, and they have evidently
suffered somewhat in translation, but they could only have been written
in a country where the learned class looked upon instruction as a part of
education, and where a teacher aimed at being the Master of a school
rather than a schoolmaster. " The good singer makes men (able) to
continue his notes, and the good teacher makes them able to carry out
his ideas. His words are brief, but far-reaching ; unpretentious, but deep ;
with few illustrations, but instructive In his way he may be said to per
petuate his ideas." The best witness to the skill of the teachers of the
age is to be found in the success with which their ideas have been per
petuated, even to the present day, by generations of teachers trained out
of this "Record."
The introduction of the " Competition Wallahs " into the public service
must have been effected gradually. It was specified what offices they
were at each stage qualified to hold — those, for instance, who could write
9,000 characters or more were eligible as annalists, — but as offices of the
same grade were already filled by non-collegians, the grades reached by
examination are liable to be confused with the functions of equal profit
and dignity not so reached. While only a few scholars were turned out
every year, they were naturally absorbed by the teaching and examining
bodies employed by the State, so that the first effect of the literary revival
seems to have been mainly the addition of some endowed schoolmasters
to the ranks of the official hierarchy.
Shortly before the usurpation of Wang-mang, the number of scholars on
the imperial foundation was raised to 3,000, in memory of the number of
disciples said to have followed the teaching of Confucius. The revival of
a systematic scheme of local instruction is ascribed to a governor of Ching-
tu-fu, about 140 B.c, and the example of this distant and isolated settle-
1 S. B. xxviii., p. 89.

i2o OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
ment was recommended for general imitation throughout the empire.
There were two grades of local schools and two of higher colleges, and
many scholars are commemorated in later ages in connection with their
care for these schools in their native places or in the districts under their
government. In less than 150 years, twenty edicts were issued, urginsi
the importance of employing capable persons in the public service ; and
the informal review of all the talents and all the virtues of a district, which
would enable a provincial governor to " present " such persons to the
emperor, seems to have been the germ out of which the present examina
tion system grew.
There was an intermediate stage, when the State aimed at conducting
the higher education of its future employees ; and then success in the pro
vincial examinations was the most obvious qualification for selection as
an imperial scholar. Subsequently the examination test was retained and
used more and more widely, without reference to the imperial colleges.
The number of students allowed to be recommended for examination was
limited in proportion to the population, as the number of degrees to be
conferred annually is now. In the reign of Ping-ti (1-6 a.d.), we are told
that forty of the first class of competitors became officers, twenty of the
second class were joined to the household of the Heir Apparent, and forty
of the third class entered the department of the Minister of Rites. One
of the innovations of Wang-mang was that he obliged the sons of superior
officers to pass the public examination as a condition of receiving office.
It is clearly explained that under the Eastern Hans there were two
alternative modes of entry to the public service : promotion from inferior
posts, in which the aspirant was the employee of an officer, not of the
State ; and appointment to office as a reward for success in the examina
tions, besides the casual admissions granted on the ground of birth or
favour. An empress in the 2nd century a.d. founded a school for the
education of royal children of both sexes, and as it was to be open to the
" four families " J of external relations, it would seem that the empress had
some intention of assailing the established mode of tracing relationships
in the male line only ; and as the logical result of this would have been
to enable women to reign in their own right — which the empress mothers
often felt well able to do — it is not surprising that the scheme for the
higher education of women met with little favour, and was allowed to
perish with its originator.
Up to this time the jealousy felt by the race of practical politicians
for the trained men of letters, who had begun to compete with them for
the spoils of office, seems to have resembled the natural rivalry between
the lay and the clerical element in other countries. But towards the close
of the 2nd century the intrusion of a third set of competitors resulted in
a sort of triangular duel, for which it would be hard to find a parallel or
1 In the genealogical tree (App. K), to give four separate families it is necessary to go
back to the great-grandfather ; whereas if the mother's family is also counted, the four
families would be found within the three generations.

REIGN OF THE HAN DYNASTY. 121
precedent in history. The emperor Ho-ti (89-105 a.d.) was the first to
raise eunuchs to the highest office, and for long afterwards their employment
as generals or in other posts of authority outside the court was regarded
as a grave scandal. But the elaborate forms and ceremonies of the
Chinese court gave these official chamberlains peculiar opportunities for
entangling their imperial master in a maze of etiquette, of which none but
themselves had the clue, so that even duly appointed ministers could only
obtain access to the emperor's person by their favour. The literati had
more reason to resent this innovation than the nobles, because the weak
ness of the royal power, of which the influence of these palace slaves was
a symptom, gave to the holders of provincial governorships the very oppor
tunity they most desired, for reestablishing the hereditary character of their
charges and therewith their own feudal independence.
The literati had no such compensation, and their disaffection showed
itself in cabals, not to say conspiracies, of which the importance may be
measured by the fact that a private " authors' association " was made the
subject of criminal prosecution in the year 166 a.d.1 The party, however,
was not broken up by the attack, for twelve years later the attempt to
found a new imperial academy broke down, because of the refusal of all
the leading scholars to take part in the project, private schools under their
direction being preferred to the imperial establishment with a staff of
mediocrities. The discontent was not limited to the orthodox school, for
the insurrection of the " Yellow caps," which was not suppressed without
great bloodshed, was headed by three brothers, who professed an ardent
devotion to the doctrines of Lao-tsze.
In the latter half of the 2nd century a.d., the double demand for copper,
for religious images and weapons of war, left so little available for the
currency that its depreciation followed as a matter of course. At the
same time (165-185 a.d.) the land tax had been raised to 10 tsien per mow,
which would make the burden of the tenant, with 100 mow, five times as
heavy as in the earlier years of the dynasty.2 Over-taxation, civil war, and
a pestilence which raged between 170 and 175, combined to desolate the
provinces, and during the reign of the last Emperor (190-220 a.d.)- the
virtual dismemberment of the empire had gone so far that the generals, who
founded the three kingdoms, did so at the expense of other rebels, rather
than at that of any legitimate ruler.
With all its social and political vicissitudes, the reign of the Han
sovereigns remains one of the most important epochs in the history of
China, as the fact that the whole race has been called by their name — the
sons of Han — sufficiently proves. The Middle antiquity of China ends
with the Chow Dynasty. The modern history of the empire must be said
1 Biot, L Instruction publique, p. 189. De Mailla, iii. p. 473. Secret societies have
always been a danger in China. Chuang-tze (p. 272) instances, among the results of the
appointment by Wen Wang of a minister wno " issued no unjust regulations," that in
three years "all dangerous organizations were broken up."
2 Journ. As., I.e., p. 279.

122 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
to begin with the Tang Dynasty, but its foundation may be attributed to
the Hans, who codified its law, edited its classics, extended its renown, and
witnessed the invention of its most distinctive manufacture, the porcelain,
which was first made during this period, in lieu of common earthenware,
till then used in China as elsewhere.

CHAPTER XL
FROM THE THREE KINGDOMS TO THE SOUY DYNASTY.
(221-620 A.D.)
The history of the next 400 years may be passed over briefly, not that it is
wanting in matter of human interest, but because the enduring features of
Chinese civilization are elaborated in the flourishing days of a united
empire. Yet we must not exaggerate the extent to which the country as a
whole is affected by the intervening periods of comparative anarchy or
disruption. Of course the people suffered severely from the outbreaks of
rebellion and civil war which heralded and succeeded every change of
dynasty, but outside the actual seat of war, life went on as usual, and
there was seldom a time when, taking the empire all through, disorder was
not the exception and peaceful industry the rule ; so that, even during the
most inglorious periods, the habits of settled application, which had
always characterized the peasantry, were able to go on gradually and
silently gathering the strength of a second nature, till they appear as the
essential and dominant feature of the whole social body.
Ssema-tsien, and later historians and philosophers after him, speak as
of an everlasting law, of the sequence of prosperity and decay ; but on
looking back over the 2,000 years during which the history of China has
been recorded at length, we see that in each period of prosperity, the
standard of civilization and well-being stands a degree higher than that of
the last corresponding period. The proportion of the population un
touched by the horrors of civil disorder was greater during the period of
the three kingdoms, which followed the fall of the Eastern Hans, than in
the days of the Warring States before the reunion of the empire under
Chi-hoang-ti. The prosperity of the Tang Dynasty was wider spread and
more deeply rooted than that of the Hans, and the reaction under the
Five Posterior dynasties did not reproduce all the anarchy of the Three
kingdoms.1 Chinese literature reached its golden age under the Sung
Dynasty, which in most other respects was an advance upon that of Tang,
and henceforward the whole empire was never broken up into disordered
fragments. The Mongols sought to keep the empire in the state they
found it, since in no other could its sovereignty be so rich a prize. The
native Ming Dynasty, which succeede'd the warlike Yuen, was, as com
pared with the latter, as the politic Tang emperors compared to the
1 For the order of the dynasties see Appendix L, and for specimens of the materials
available for the history of China even in its obscurer periods, Pfizmaier, Nachrichten aus
d. Geschichte d. N'drdlichen Thsi. ¦=3

i24 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
military Hans, exercising with less effort a more potent sway ; while
there can be little question that the founders of the Mantchu Dynasty were
centuries ahead in civilization of Genghis and Kubla.
Whether the civilization of the masses in China proper has made much
progress between the days of Marco Polo and of Father Ricci, or between
those of Ricci and Dr. Legge, is not so easy to determine ; but the civili
zation, such as it is, has never ceased to spread over a wider area, and,
while its volume does not detract from its vitality, there is always the
presumption in human affairs that the quantity of a force will in some
measure re-act upon its quality. It is a reasonable conjecture that there
has been as much progress, in regard to the minor details which constitute
the finish of material civilization, during the last five or six centuries in
China as during the last five or six decades in Europe. This kind of
progress, like the motion of a glacier, is easily mistaken for a state of rest ;
but 2,000 years of it are no more than sufficient to account for the positive
level of general culture and comfort in the Middle Kingdom of to-day.
After the fall of the Hans the empire was divided, for forty-five years,
into three kingdoms. This is the period celebrated in the San-kwo-chi, a
vast historical romance with a large substratum of fact, from which Chinese
dramatists are chiefly wont to derive the plots and incidents of their
historic plays. Of the three kingdoms, the most powerful bore the name
of Wei, and included the northern provinces of China with Loyang for
its capital. The second, of which the capital was ultimately fixed at
Nanking, embraced most of the south ; while the after Hans, who alone
claimed the throne by inheritance, were restricted to the provinces of the
south-west, of which Tching-tu-fu was the natural capital. The empire was
reunited in 265 a.d., after which six minor dynasties reigned in succession ;
the fourth of these bore the name of Sung, but must not be confounded
with the great dynasty which preceded the Mongols., The empire was
again divided on its accession, 420 a.d., and the Sung and successive
imperial dynasties ruled over Southern China ; while a Tatar dynasty,
which had taken the name of Wei, was supreme in the north. This
period lasted from 420 a.d. to 589 a.d. and is called the age of the
Northern and Southern Empires.
It was in the year 335 a.d., in one of the seventeen small kingdoms
which divided China during the short and feeble rule of the T'sin Imperial
Dynasty, that natives of the empire were first allowed to take Buddhist
monastic vows. Fifteen years later there were as many as forty-two pagodas
enumerated at Loyang, and the Taoists began to deprecate the antagonism
of the religion, which they saw was likely to prove a dangerous rival, by
claiming Buddha as an incarnation of Lao-tsze; but the overture was
met by a revision of the elastic Buddhist chronology throwing the date of
Prince Sakhya Mouni far enough back to exclude the possibility of such a
derogatory hypothesis. In 400 a.d., the first of the string of Chinese
pilgrims to the land of Buddha began his recorded travels, and from Fa-
hien and his successors, the Brahmans quoted by the Armenian Cosmas,

FROM THE THREE KINGDOMS TO SO UY DYNASTY. 125
(550 a.d.) learnt to think of China as equal in size to half the world. In
518 an embassy was sent from the Northern empire to bring Buddhist
books from India, and the division of the empire was known in the West
without prejudice to the reputation of the people, of whom a writer early
in the 7th century tells us that " they have just laws and their life is full of
temperate wisdom."
In 435 a.d., a provincial governor addressed a memorial to the emperor
on the dangerous spread of Buddhism in the past 400 years. Temples of
Fo, he complains, are to be seen in the smallest villages ; to say nothing
of the waste of labour, valuable building materials, stone, bricks, and
timber are thrown away upon these useless structures, while quantities of
gold, silver, and copper, that might otherwise be used in the public service,
are consumed to make the idols worshipped by the perverted people.
The memorialist concludes by begging that the temples may be destroyed
and the materials used for the repair of public buildings. The Emperor
approved of the suggestion, and issued an edict in accordance with it,
almost exactly to the same effect as those vvhich, 1,300 years later, put a
stop to the spread of Catholic Christianity in China.1
We may be sure that at the earlier, as at the later date, there was no
intolerance of speculative opinion at work. The Chinese dread of clerical
aggression is purely civil and economical. The temporal authority cared
nothing about the beliefs or opinions of its subjects, but it claimed to
control their conduct, and it was contrary to the public interest that they
should systematically waste their substance in endowing convents. Their
money was their own as long as they spent it properly — in nourishing
parents and children, in paying taxes and performing the customary cere
monies, — but if the emperor's subjects tried to subsidize an independent,
spiritual authority by temporal gifts, it was at their peril, and the gifts
were liable to be confiscated, like the treasures of a rebellious prince.
The material progress of Buddhism was not arrested and scarcely checked
by these edicts, but they were really successful in resisting the danger —
which the biography of Hiouen-thsang shows not to have been chimerical
— of the machinery of public instruction falling into the hands of the heresi-
archs and being used to train priests for the service of the religious sects,
instead of scholars for the service of the State. Hitherto, as subsequently,
independent scholars had led the way in literature, and the imperial colleges
depended for their popularity and success upon the eminence of the
teachers they could enlist.
The doom of orthodoxy would have been sealed if its defence had been
abandoned to the State schools, while heretical teachers succeeded to the
place and influence of the unofficial Confucianists. Naturally the new
teachers fought less hard for the control of the schools, about which they
cared little, than for the endowments of temples and monasteries, about
which they cared a great deal ; and so the state of antagonism was per
petuated between the few, who knew much and believed little, and the
1 De Mailla, v. p. 42.

126 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
many, whose credulity was to be excused by their ignorance. As regarded
temporalities, the struggle with Buddhism did not reach its height for
some centuries, but the intellectual supremacy of Confucianism was not
seriously endangered by its rivalry after the stringent measures of the
5th century.
The 400 years hefore the accession of the Tang Dynasty belong to the
Dark Ages of Chinese history. It was complained that not one in forty of
the dignitaries employed at court knew how to handle a pencil.1 The State
colleges seem to have degenerated into boarding schools for a class of
privileged idlers, as their endowments survived, while the custom of employ
ing collegians fell into abeyance. The private schools, which generally en
joyed and deserved the confidence of the learned, were refused all official
countenance, apparently from the suspicion that voluntary schools, as we
may call them, were destined to promote the interest of religious sects '
rather than disinterested study of the native classics ; and even if this sus
picion was to some extent justified by fact, it is certain that the discourage
ment of ail private schools indifferently had an injurious effect on the
standard of education.2
No material change in the condition of the industrial population took
place during this period. The T'sin (280-419 a.d.) divided able-bodied
workers into classes according to age, giving each a certain allowance ol
land, with extra quantities for nobles and princes. This example was fol
lowed by the northern Wei Dynasty, and in 485 the latter made a serious
attempt to revive the agrarian policy of the ancients. Every adult male
was allowed 40 tnow for corn and every female 20, besides 20 mow for
mulberry trees allotted to every house, which latter portion became inalien
able.3 Land in excess of this amount was not confiscated, but was allowed
to be sold, which the duty fields were not. At the beginning of the same
century the Government endeavoured to promote the plantation of mulberry
trees and the cultivation of waste lands by giving distinctions to the
families which had oxen for the plough. It is curious that those who had
no oxen were expected to have slaves, for the law seems intended to limit
the number of slaves held by one owner, while it is scarcely likely that cul
tivators too poor to have any oxen should have too many slaves. Eight
slaves, the number allowed to a married householder, were reckoned for
purposes of cultivation as equivalent to a yoke of ten oxen.4
By the legislation in force between 477 a.d. and 499 a.d., all cultivators
had a certain share of land allotted to them ; land held in excess of this
allowance only might be sold, and no excess might be bought. If a house
holder died, leaving no representative, his relations, i.e. the clan or family
community, received the inheritance in preference to strangers; but failing
direct representatives, the State resumed possession of the land, in which
the grantee had nominally only a life interest. Migration was again recog
nised by the State as a means ot providing for surplus population, and if
1 Essai sur T Instruction publique en Chine, p. 211. 2 De Mailla, v. pp. 45, 54.
3 Journ. As., I.e., p. 289. 4 /o> p 2g7_

FROM THE THREE KINGDOMS TO SOUY DYNASTY. 127
the people refused to move when in want, they were compelled to cut down
their trees and plough up their orchards to leave more room for grain.
Northern China was colonized at this time, and it was noted that property
was much less unequally divided there than in the south, where positive
legislation could not entirely undo the effects of feudalism and the con
centration of wealth in a few hands, which had gone on in times of dis
order. It is not clear how the enactment providing for home colonies was car
ried out in fully settled parts, where there were few or no waste lands at
the disposal of the Crown ; but in 4S4 a.d. the system of paying officers by
salaries instead of land grants was introduced,1 and this change would no
doubt set free a good deal of State property. At all events, in the next
century we read of persons renting the public lands, so that these cannot
have been exhausted by the allotments.
The system of land tenure was never independent of that of taxation.
From the days of Chow two main sources of revenue had always been re
cognised — the land tax, which was liable to fall off when from any cause the
cultivators ceased to form the bulk of the population, and the personal tax,
paid in respect of what we should still call personal property. The govern
ment allotments of land were not apparently intended to represent what
was required for the maintenance of a family, but only to furnish where
withal to meet the demands of the tax collector ; hence the tax payable in
respect of these allotments seems extraordinarily high for China, reaching
a third of the produce, while those who rented a whole farm only paid about
a tenth, which was always regarded as the legitimate proportion, whether
levied under the name of rent or land tax. It is obvious that the condition
of free cultivators without land could not become intolerable so long as
they were able to rent it on the simple condition of paying the ordinary
tax : and as long as the State had land to let on these terms, private agglo-
merators would be unable to get farmers to pay more to themselves ; so
that large estates could only be profitable on condition of evading the land
tax, or being tilled for the owner by servile labour.
The gradual pacification of the empire was much assisted by the reluc
tance of the free cultivators to leave their homes, when not suffering from
distress, to fight for one feeble ruler rather than another. At the end of
the 5th century a general, summoned to lead his troops to a distant province,
demurred on the ground that the men of the north do not willingly go
far from their homes, and can only be depended on to keep together for
short raids where booty is to be got.3 The mercenary element in the
Chinese character was by preference pacific, and it was never necessary to
prolong a war for fear of leaving the army out of work.
It appears from the edifying anecdotes preserved in history that the
pleasures of the chase were still a snare to Chinese monarchs, but they were
seldom left without some superior man to keep before them the moral
ideals of earlier and greater days. The hereditary prince while out hunt-
1 I.e., p. 288. 2 De Mailla, v. p. 188.

128 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
ing admires the beauty of a waving corn-field — -the sight which filled Keats
with ecstasy — and he is at once reminded of the labours that have been
spent on it and, by implication, of the wickedness of destroying their fruits
by letting the hunt sweep over them. And an emperor who had stayed out
beyond the customary hour, was rebuked by the officer on guard, who
affected not to recognise him. The emperor had gone out early, and it
was impossible that he should so far have neglected the duties of his office
and the rules of propriety as to stay out hunting all day ! It was also
regarded as the extremity of license for the palace gates to stand open by
night, or for the heir apparent to mix freely for pleasure with the common
people or discard the orthodox robes of state. Anarchy could hardly
obtain in the kingdom, when the court was in such rigid subjection to the
Rites and their interpreters.
The license refused to members of the imperial family or persons still
holding official rank might be taken without censure by those who delib
erately preferred a private station. A poet who flourished towards the
close of the T'sin Dynasty gave up official life, after three months' trial,
rather than put on a dress of ceremony to visit the provincial inspectors,
and after his retirement, spent his time in drinking, studying, and writing
verses — a record which was not considered discreditable. Besides this
"doctor of the five willows," there was a scholar who held office with
credit, in the second quarter of the 5th century, in spite of his passion for
roaming alone upon solitary hill-tops or in wooded ravines ; so that it seems
as if in China, unlike Europe, the taste for wild scenery had preceded that
for tame and cultivated country. In China, as in Egypt, the enjoyment of
natural beauty seems to have been frank and keen. "The Master said,
'The wise find pleasure in water; the virtuous find pleasure in hills,'"1
and the extent to which the pleasure is experienced, without pedantry or
affectation, is a strong testimony to the diffusion of wisdom and virtue, in
the Middle Kingdom. And we should undervalue the degree of civilization
attained in it, even during these dark ages, if we did not realize that the
modern taste for flowers and scenery was already developed.
Intercourse with Western Asia was kept up occasionally. Wen-ti of the
Wei Dynasty received ambassadors from three kings — of Khotan, of another
district on the river Hi, and one near Lop-nor — and published a decree in
honour of the event, in which he quoted the Shi and Shoo for the praise of
submissive barbarians, and concluded : " Now that the strangers of the
western lands come with sincerity to solicit reunion with the empire, let the
ambassadors that they send be received and supported."2 Other embassies
were received in 461 and 466 a.d., and one was sent (509 a.d.) with
presents by the Persian king, Kobad, whose reign is otherwise memorable
for the career of the socialist Mazdek. The intercourse between the courts
of China and Persia removes any difficulty that might otherwise have been
felt in claiming Mazdek as a disciple of Mencius, and the resemblance of
1 Analects, vi. p. 21.
2 Abel Remusat, Histoire de la ville de Khotan, p. 10.

FROM THE THREE KINGDOMS TO SO UY DYNASTY. 129
some remarks, attributed to him in the Shah-nameh, to those of Mencius
quoted above is too close to be accidental.
There was a drought, we are told, causing famine, and great and small
came to the palace asking for food. Mazdek said to the king -. "A man
has been bitten by a serpent, another has an antidote and will not give it :
what shall be done to him ? " "He is a murderer," replied the king, "and
shall be slain before my gate as soon'as the family of the dead can seize
him." The next day Mazdek begged to be instructed again : " Suppose a
man has been bound with chains and would give his life for a loaf of bread,
and it is refused him and he dies, what should be the punishment of him
who, having bread, refuses it to the prisoner? " The king replied, " He is
a wretch, and is answerable for the death which he might have prevented."
Then Mazdek went out at the palace gate and bade the hungry crowd go
and wherever they could find corn concealed, take it for themselves, and if
they were asked to pay for it, burn the village. His own granaries and the
king's were plundered like the rest, and when people came to the king to
remonstrate, Mazdek declared that he had only followed the royal in
structions, for bread was the antidote to the mortal poison of hunger.
He then delivered a discourse which seemed to his hearers so just that
they all, including the king, expressed their assent to it. The man with
nothing, he contended, is the equal of the rich, and no one should be
suffered to retain superfluous possessions. The rich should be the warp
and the poor the woof; there should be equality in the world, and the
excess of wealth is bad and unlawful. Women, houses, and goods should
be shared, and the poor made the equal of the rich. Chinese radicalism,
it seems, lost some of its sweet reasonableness and temperance in the
course of transmission, and the communistic element in Mazdek's doctrine
is a purely Persian addition. The king's son, Kesra (Chosroes), who was
not converted, among other objections urged that if the new and revolu
tionary doctrine was received, the father would not know his son ; and in
the eyes of the domestic races, it would be not less certainly condemned if
children as well as wives were to be common, so as to disable the son from
knowing his own mother. Yet the tragic conclusion of the tale leaves
modern sympathies rather on the side of the revolutionary. Prince Kesra
spent six months in exhausting all the wisdom of Zoroastrian sages, and
then proceeded to re-convert his father by such arguments as these.
"If men are all equal and there is no difference between great and small,
who will be willing to serve, and how can authority be exercised ? Who will
work for you and me, and how will the good be separated from the bad ?
When a man dies, to whom will his house and fortune belong if the king
and the mechanic are equal ? When all are masters, where are the paid
servants? When all have treasures, where is the treasurer? No founder of
religion has ever spoken like this before." Kobad, like some social
philosophers of a much later date, thought these criticisms convincing, and
gave Kesra carte blanche to deal with the heresiarch and his followers.
He planted the latter, to the number of 3,000, head downwards, along the
vol. 11. — p.c. K

130 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
walls of his garden, and then summoned Mazdek to see the fruit borne by
the seed he had sown. Then he hung the teacher head downwards from
a high gibbet, and slew him with arrows.1
The story shows that Chinese literature was known to serious thinkers
in other countries, though the influence of the Middle State, as a civilizing
force, was strictly limited to its own subjects. A generation or more
before, Moses of Chorene spoke of the Chinese people as wealthy, 'civilized,
and eminently pacific, and there can be little doubt that trade with Persia
and the various kingdoms bordering the desert went on continuously in
spite of the subdivision of the empire. The superior safety and quickness
of the land traffic is alleged by Cosmas as a reason why there was so much
silk in Persia, and the quantity exported is proved to have been consider
able, by its reaching the empire of Justinian in quantities sufficient to
suggest the thought of acclimatizing the precious worm. Another Persian
embassy was received in 567 a.d.
The last of the six minor dynasties preceding the Tang did a good deal
to facilitate its work by consolidating the imperial authority. In 607 the
emperor threatened to drop all correspondence with Japan, because it was
addressed from the "Great son of heaven in the East" to the " Great son
of heaven in the West," and this was "contrary to the Rites." This was
equivalent to a declaration of hostility, because, as Amyot observes,
" tributary '' in Chinese history means virtually ally, and Japan conse
quently protested against being erased from the list of tributaries. The
Chinese were forbidden, in the same reign, to carry arms — a change always
significant of an important stage in national progress. The Souy emperors
(589-619 a.d.) gave some attention to letters, though the attempt to take
stock of the surviving literary monuments of former ages ended in the
discovery that 60 or 70 per cent, of the works known to have existed
under the Hans had been lost beyond recovery. The form of character
now in use was adopted (375 a.d.) towards the close of the T'sin Dynasty.
About the same time (350 a.d.) the earliest mention of the tea plant
being cultivated for the infusion made from its leaves is met with, and it
is noticeable that references to drunkenness become much rarer in future
than in the literature of the earlier times. The general use of hot tea as a
beverage has also contributed to the remarkable freedom from epidemics
of modern China ; the water boiled for tea is rendered innocuous, and
besides, since the habit of taking hot drinks has been formed, it has
become usual for those who cannot obtain tea, to drink always hot water,
instead of cold. One other worthy of the 3rd century should be men
tioned, the doctor Chua-to, because he is still venerated as the patron
saint of the medical profession, and has incense burnt before his tablet by
every member of the faculty. He is said to have invented anaesthetics
and to have been put to death by a general who suspected the motives
of his offer to try trepanning as a cure for headache.
1 J. Mohl, Le Livrc des Rois, vol. vi. p. 109. The poet concludes : " If thou art a
man of sense, do not follow the way of Mazdek."

FROM THE THREE KINGDOMS TO SOUY DYNASTY. 131
The arts as well as letters were held in honour under the Souy princes,
for besides the production of a famous green porcelain, the dynasty is
notable as the first in which a famous artist in pottery is commemorated by
name, an honour conferred upon one who brought to the capital some
vases which were described as "artificial jade."1 Manufactories had
previously been established at Si-ngan-fu and Loyang under the first Wei
(220-264 ad.) and under the T'sin Dynasty (265-419 a.d.) blue china of
high repute was made in the province of Tche-kiang. The prosperity of
different parts of the empire was unequal, but all the rich towns, which
Tai-tsong-tang was shortly to gain credit by refusing to sack, could not
have existed, if the individual life of the people had not gone on its
tranquil course, habitually unmolested even by the weak and tyrannical
rulers whom he superseded.
1 Histoire et Fabrication de la Porcelaine Chinoise. Ouvrage traduit du Chinois, par
M. Stanislas Julien, 1856, xxiv.

CHAPTER XII.
THE TANG DYNASTY.
(620-907 A.D.)
§ 1. Historical Sketch.
With the accession of Kao-tsou, the founder of the Tang Dynasty, a new
period begins — a period not cut off from what precedes it by any great up
heaval or transformation of the national life, but one which joins on still
more closely to the ages which follow it. The first Tang emperor did not
long survive his triumph ; he scandalized the tribunal of Rites by insisting
on having one of his daughters buried with military honours, because she
had raised an army and marched to his relief when hard pressed ; and he
was also accused of a leaning towards Taoism. A palace intrigue to get
rid of the younger son, whose victories had done much to establish the
dynasty, was defeated, and in 626 a.d. Kao-tsong abdicated in favour of
this prince.
The reign of Tai-tsong opens with the exchange on all hands of senti
ments appropriate to the dawn of a new golden age. The Emperor defers
piously to the patriotic counsels of his mother, cultivates sincerity of speech,
rejects flatterers, discourages superstition, and gives his confidence to
worthy ministers, all of which traits are illustrated by edifying anecdotes
which it is not necessary to quote. The late emperor had made all mem
bers of his family princes of the first rank, and complaints were heard of
the expense thus imposed on the country. Tai-tsong accordingly reduced
the number of princes, allowing those only to retain the first rank who had
deserved their place by services rendered to the State. In 637 anew code
was drawn up in 500 articles. Milder penalties were substituted for ninety-
two causes of death, and seventy-one of exile previously recognised, and
the total number of penalties was reduced to twenty ; 1,590 rites and cere
monies, having the force of law, were enumerated, but, as usual, these were
mostly derived from former codes.
By his orders an eminent scholar drew up a report upon the popular
manuals of astrology, which were denounced as pernicious and delusive.
In pursuance of the delightful Chinese plan of giving reasons for every offi
cial decree, it is explained that, according to the astrologers, all persons
born at the same day and hour should have a similar fate, which experience
proves not to be the case ; while many of those who are actually overtaken
by the same destiny — as, for instance, the soldiers who perished in a great

THE TANG DYNASTY. 133
historical massacre— were certainly not all born under the same constella
tions.1 The same manifesto contains a warning against the arts of diviners
who profess to tell what burial-places, if chosen, will bring good luck to the
survivors. It is mentioned incidentally that burial-places used always to
be on the north side of a town, which, as the cold or shady side, might
originally have been preferred on hygienic grounds.2 But the superstitions
attacked were too thoroughly indigenous to be suppressed by edict, and
they survive at the present day in the well-known form of Feng-shwuy.
The Emperor declined a flattering invitation to have his public utterances
collected in a book, as three emperors of recent short-lived dynasties had
done ; but he finally bequeathed a book of instructions, called Ti-fan-fu, for
the use of his son and successor.
The next reign was disturbed by Tatar incursions, Tibetan aggressions,
and palace intrigues, the lawful Empress having been supplanted by a ti-de-
vanl Buddhist nun,3 whom she herself brought to court to supersede another
favourite. The new-comer obtained complete ascendancy over the em
peror, and, on his death, she took upon herself, as empress mother, to de
pose the emperor for having raised his wife's father to an unsuitable dignity,
and reigned herself in his stead. The usurpation was successful, and if the
supreme power had come legitimately into her hands, the Empress Wu-heou
would probably have been allowed to count among the capable and suc
cessful rulers of the dynasty. As it was, insurrections were frequent, and
many officers of high standing held aloof from her administration. She
attempted to change the name of the dynasty, and by raising her ances
tors to the imperial rank, attempted to substitute her own family for
that of Tang.
She is said to have established examinations for women, with a view to
admitting them to the civil service. And she provoked a dangerous
amount of discontent by allowing and inviting secret reports, addressed to
herself, not through ministers, which it seems took the form of delations.
In 689 a.d. she had the unparalleled audacity, in her own womanly person,
to offer sacrifice in the imperial robes. The comparative leniency with
which the historiographers, nevertheless, record her offences, may be due
to the fact that she felt herself strong enough to tolerate the usual amount
of free-spoken criticism, as to the favour shown to her own relations and
the like. The best princes heed such remonstrances in Chinese story, but
the praise of second-bestness is always allowed to those who listen without
resentment, even when, it is added, they take no further notice. In 705
a.d., after twenty years of empire, and shortly before her death, at the
venerable age of eighty-one, Wu-heou was forced to make way for her son,
who, in his turn, was ruled by his wife, a lady whom the candid historians
admit to have been much cleverer than himself, though she failed in the
attempt to interrupt the succession as Wu-heou had done.
1 De Mailla, vi. p. 94. 2 Cf. S.B., xxvii. p. 170.
3 Or rather by a member of the late emperor's harem, who, according to the custom
of the period, had been forced to retire to a convent.

134 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
After another short reign, we come to that of Hiuen-tsong, 714-756 a.d.,
which began prosperously, but ended in disaster and abdication. The
faults which the historians lay to his charge are the want of self-control, the
love of women, elevation of eunuchs, and addiction to magic rites and reli
gious superstitions. But the troubles were at first local, and did not pre
vent a moderate increase in the numbers of the tax-paying population : a
census of 726 gives over seven million families or forty-one million persons
in the empire, besides those employed in the army or the civil service, and
in 754 the families exceed nine millions, and the total population fifty-two
millions. In 746 the revolt which endangered the dynasty began. It was
headed by a successful general, and former favourite of the emperor, of
barbarous origin, who took that means of defending himself against rivals
and detractors. The capital and central provinces suffered most severely,
and before his abdication, Hiuen-tsong had been driven to take refuge in
Sz'chuen.1 The census of 764 a.d. shows an almost incredible falling off in the popu
lation during the decade, less than three million householders being regis
tered. The figures may be taken as an authentic record of the empire's
weakness, though the actual loss of life in battle and famine cannot have
been so great as they imply. Some districts were depopulated, and it is
stated that during one siege, in Honan, human flesh was eaten. Si-ngan-fu
also suffered from famine owing to the blocking of the canals, by which
grain was imported from the south. But the census returns would also be
affected by the necessary omission of all districts in the hands of the rebels,
as well as those temporarily deserted by the cultivators, to say nothing of
all that would profit by the disturbances to make fraudulent returns.
At the same time a determined attempt was made, especially in Honan,
Shantung, and Petcheli, to restore the hereditary character of provincial
governorships, and in 784 a.d., a number of these governors united to
gether to force the emperor to appoint the sons of all the allies to succeed
on their fathers' death. The fate of the provinces at this time depended
much on the local governors, who for good or evil were able to make
themselves tolerably independent of the empire. Sz'chuen seems to have
enjoyed exceptional good fortune in this respect. The law provided (as
it still does) that rations should be given to the families of soldiers on a
campaign, in addition to their regular pay ; but the general in charge of
this province earned much gratitude, by continuing the allowance to the
widows and children of deceased soldiers, till the former married again
and the latter were of age to work. And this liberal ruler was so good
an economist in other respects, that he was able to remit the usual tribute
to court and at the same time levy less than the customary amount of
taxes. Tibet and the Tatars were still the most formidable neighbours, and the
relations with the latter are a curious commentary on the Chinese preten-
1 Memoire sur la Population de la Chine et ses variations. E. Biot, Journ As., 1836,
P- 457-

THE TANG DYNASTY. 135
sions to have to do only with tributaries. It had been agreed that the
Tatars should bring in so many horses annually, which the Chinese Govern
ment undertook to buy. The Tatars looked upon the agreement as
entered into for their own interest, and brought in all their worn-out beasts,
to the disgust of the Chinese officers. On appealing, however, to the
emperor in 773, they were instructed not to trouble themselves about the
quality of the horses, but to pay a fixed price in silk for every animal, and
take their chance of finding a few available as cavalry mounts : an arrange
ment with which the Tatars were graciously pleased to rest contented for a
while.1 By the accession of Tetsong, the ninth Emperor of this dynasty
(779-802 a.d.), open rebellion had been suppressed, and his reign began
peaceably and in good hope. He ordered exact registers to be kept of all
that was brought into the imperial treasuries to check waste and peculation,
and he won great popularity by establishing a special tribunal to hear
appeals from the people who considered themselves wronged by any of
the officers of State He also revived the legendary use of the drum, by
which those who had vainly sought to obtain justice elsewhere made their
appeal resound in the ears of the emperor himself. But the time for this
primitive remedy was found to have gone by, and so many frivolous cases
were brought before the emperor that he ordered all causes to be first con
sidered by the new tribunal and only those of importance finally referred
to himself. The same edict forestalled the more stringent prohibitions of
Hien-tsong, by making it illegal to erect any new temples, or receive fresh
candidates for Buddhist orders.
In the year 780 a.d. the census returns showed an increase of about a
million families since the disasters which were at their height in 764 j2 the
army at the same period consisted of 868,000 effective soldiers, and the
revenue is given at 20,557,000 measures of grain,3 and 30,898,000 taels ;
but internal peace was not long maintained ; local governors drove the
people to revolt by oppressive taxes, and when the revenue fell off it was
impossible to pay the soldiers, who were ready to follow any leader who
offered them a chance of plunder. In 784 the Emperor proclaimed a
general amnesty, and in one of the penitent manifestoes, to which Chinese
sovereigns are addicted, he takes to himself the blame for the misdeeds ol
all his subordinates and appeals to them to help him to behave better in
future. The curious document served its purpose for a time, peace was
restored, the harvests were abundant, and the emperor allowed himself to
believe that the people must be prosperous at last. In 787 a.d., com
plaints were made of a dearth of horses, animals which seem never to
have been really naturalized in China. In 793 a tax was for the first time
levied on tea.
1 De Mailla, vi. p. 311. An abridged history of the Tang Dynasty, translated by P.
Gaubil, supplements De Mailla for this period.
2 Journ. As., 1836, p. 457.
8 Of 100 lbs. each.

136 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
The reign of Hien-tsong (805-820) began with virtuous protestations
that "not a piece of silk is used in the palace without being recorded,"1
whereby he was enabled to use the more liberality in dealing out grain to
the distressed ; but later in the reign he is accused both of wasting his
treasures in lavish gifts to unworthy favourites, and of accepting large
gifts (one of a million pieces of silk) from officers, who it was notorious
could only have obtained them by oppressing the people. This reign is
also memorable for the revival of the political power of the eunuchs, with
results to the dynasty like those of a similar development in the last cen
tury of the Han rule. In 809 a.d., an eunuch was appointed general, in
defiance of public opinion, and the division between the officers of the
interior, and those of the exterior, began to assume importance. The
eunuchs succeeded in nominating a majority of the officers of State, and re
sented as an interference with their rights the attempt of Wen-tsong (826-
840 a.d.) to promote meritorious officers for their services without money
or interest.
In 828 the subject for an essay given at the public examination was that
of duty and fidelity to princes. The most brilliant composition sent in
was an elaborate attack on the eunuchs, and an appeal to the emperor to
suppress their brigandage and cruelty. The examiners, while privately
loud in the praise of this piece, did not dare to select its author, and
recommended twenty-two others, who were at once provided with places.
The twenty-two memorialized the emperor against the injustice, but
without obtaining redress for their daring comrade.3
In 834 a.d., the Emperor complained that the dissensions of the nobles
gave him more trouble than the raids of Tatars or Tibetans. He attempted
to reduce the power of the chamberlains by degrees, but with so little
success, that in 835 he joined in a kind of conspiracy with two officers to
have them massacred. The plot failed, apparently because the officers in
command of the palace guard were not in the secret ; and the eunuchs'
party was so strengthened by the abortive attack, that they compelled the
emperor to decree that henceforward all affairs should be discussed and
decided in their tribunal (that of the interior), and the rest of the Govern
ment reduced to purely ministerial functions.
Between 839 and 845, the census returns showed a falling off in the
population of over 40,000 families, which caused some surprise, as there
had been no war, famine, or pestilence to account for the loss. In the
eighteenth reign of the dynasty, disorders prevailed everywhere ; a popu
lar minister was poisoned by the eunuchs ; rebellion was rife, and popular
subscriptions had to be invited to provide funds for the imperial troops.
Loyang was captured without resistance by a rebel leader, and, though
it is said that the inhabitants were not molested, a few years later the
once rich and populous city and suburbs are described as ruined and
deserted. The corruption and insolence of the eunuchs still increased ; in 886 a.d.
1 De Mailla, vi. p. 381. 2 jb., p. 453.

THE TANG DYNASTY. 137
one of them attempted to obtain control of some salt mines, which under
honest management were bringing in a large revenue to the State, and on
the refusal of the governor to surrender his charge, an accusation of dis
loyalty was brought against him by the eunuch's adopted son. From
henceforward to the close of the dynasty, the palace officials fought vigor
ously, and with ability worthy of a better cause, in defence of their own
disastrous supremacy, and they would probably have succeeded in holding
their own against domestic rivals for imperial favour, if their parasitic clutch
had not once more proved fatal to the imperial house, to which they clung
and which buried them in its fall.
Formerly the eunuchs had been content with personal influence within
the palace, and the opportunities of enriching themselves so afforded. For
them to form a political party shows the weakness of other interests, as well
as the Chinese aptitude for association under the least encouraging con
ditions. It was said on one occasion, when it had been attempted to
weaken them by detaching some from the cabal or sowing dissension
among them, that they all held together, and that if one was attacked, the
others would all sink their differences and come to his assistance. Such
instances of esprit de corps, apart from family ties, are of course not un
known, and the partisanship of a celibate clergy, of mercenary troops, or
a mixed society like the Knights Templars, is not altogether unlike the
spirit of these Chinese officers of the Interior. Politically their influence
would naturally differ from that of outside politicians, as the temper of
the permanent staff in a Government office differs from that of the respon
sible statesmen from time to time placed at the head of the department.
But to make themselves formidable beyond the palace as well as in it,
it was indispensable for them to obtain adherents outside their own body ;
and about this time the chief eunuchs set themselves to strengthen their
party by adopting young men of promise as their sons, whose promotion
they were of course able to ensure, and who, as great officers or generals,
were entirely devoted to their "fathers'" interests. In 891 there were as
many as 600 of these adopted sons, most of whom held office. The
adherence of other officers and troops, and especially of the palace guards,
was secured by largesses, while the soldiery were instigated to mutiny
against hostile nobles.
The climax was reached in 900 a.d., when the emperor was imprisoned in
his own palace by the eunuchs. He was released by force of arms the next
year, but even then the proposal to exterminate the rebels was rejected on
the ground of the immense number of them employed about the palace.
They thought themselves powerful enough to refuse all offers, even of
honourable employment, which would take them away from the court ; but
in 903 the coalition between a successful general and a loyal minister pre
vailed. An edict was published abolishing the custom of reporting affairs
of State, first to an " inner tribunal " of eunuchs, who were, it was claimed,
able to discuss them more intimately with the emperor, and therefore decide
them better ; though, in fact, the only decision taken was often to keep the

138 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
whole matter from the emperor's knowledge. The ministers were now
required to report direct to the emperor himself, and the emperor's new
masters demanded the abolition of all the " interior tribunals," and the
recall of the provincial inspectors employed by the eunuchs to terrorize the
local officials.
As in the days of the Warring States, local governors seized provinces
for themselves, only asking formally for the emperor's sanction to the /a/7
accompli. The country was desolated by their private wars, and these
revolts too were laid to the eunuchs' charge, since they were caused by
impatience of the authority exercised by such unfit menials. After this the
massacre began, and thousands were put to death ; only a few boys and
old men were spared to sweep the courts of the palace, and the emperor's
orders were conveyed directly to the nobles ; but so deeply rooted had the
habit of employing go-betweens become, that women were employed in the
mechanical office of receiving the memorials to be handed to the emperor,
and of transmitting his replies to the ministers.
The emperor had long been treated only as a puppet, the charge of
whose person gave a certain advantage, in the game of civil war, to the
leader who secured it. The chiefs of the movement against the eunuchs
had fallen out amongst themselves, and in 904 a.d. the emperor's gaoler,
the general Tchu-wen, put him and his family to death, sparing only one
younger son, whom he proclaimed emperor. Then follow massacres of
the best remaining nobles, and as the patriotic clubs or secret societies,
which had tried to stem the disorders of the last reign or to pave the way
for a new order, had been stamped out, no further resistance was possible.
The titular monarch abdicated in favour of his father's murderer, and so
the dynasty ends ; but the usurper was not held to have succeeded by the
appointment of heaven, as his elder brother condemned his disloyalty and
refused to accept rank or honours at his hands.
§ 2. Intercourse with Foreigners.
During the Tang Dynasty the intercourse between China and other con
siderable powers was not only closer but conducted on more nearly equal
terms than at any other time. In 632 the ancient settlement of Khotan,
or the " breast of the world," reappears in Chinese history as sending an
ambassador, while the account of the people given by our Chinese author
ities is still strangely sympathetic. " They understand rites and justice,
are respectful, gentle, studious, and ingenious," J possessing, that is, just
those qualities in the cultivation of which the Chinese esteem their own
superiority to lie, and for the want of which they pity and despise all the
outer barbarians with whom they are brought in contact. The men ot
Khotan, it was reported, even went beyond the Chinese in ceremoniousness,
for they were said formerly to put a knee to the ground in greeting each
other. Hiouen-thsang speaks of their capital as a city which no one has
been able to capture, and notices the decorous and equitable manners of
1 Hist, de la ville de Khotan. A. Remusat, p. 32 ff.

THE TANG DYNASTY. 139
the people, their courteous and law-abiding temper, their love of music and
dancing, and their skill in weaving fine felt and taffetas.
The neighbouring kingdom of Tibet is first mentioned in the annals for
634 a.d. as sending ambassadors with tribute and being able to raise a
large and formidable army. The first conquests attempted by it are over
the petty kingdoms of the West, and in 669 the intercourse with China is
still of a friendly character, by which the Tibetan envoy profited to give a
glowing description of the simple virtue and patriotism of his people. But
half a century later, when in reply to an embassy from Cashmere, the
Chinese Government had sent to assist Cashgar and the neighbouring
States against the troops of the Caliphs, the Tibetans formed an alliance
with the Turks against China. The relations were, however, more often
friendly than not; and in 731, when the question of sending copies of the
Chinese Classics to the king of Tibet was discussed, it was decided not to
withhold from him those means of spiritual improvement. The profit
thence derived must have been small, for in 787 a.d. China was actually
induced to seek alliances in Yunnan and India with the Caliph and the
Uigours against the Tibetans, whose incursions were felt in Shensi and the
settlements north of the desert as well as in Sz'chuen, till peace was re
stored in 821 a.d., by a treaty, which is said to be still preserved at
Lhassa. Appeals from Persia and India for help against the Saracens were
addressed to China more than once in the 7th and 8th centuries ; and the
heir apparent to the Persian throne resided for a time as hostage at the
court of China. An embassy was actually sent from Constantinople in the
time of Leo the Isaurian to the great power of the East. In 798 the kotow
was performed — not without reluctance — by an embassy from a Caliph
Galun,1 but a politic mandarin in Central Asia received Turkish princes
according to their own rites, and rebuked the Chinese officers who ridiculed
all strange usages as barbarous. But for the physical structure of the con
tinent, which isolates India and China, while freezing Tibet and nomadizing
Tartary, the spread of Arab conquest round or across the desert would
have reached a point near enough to bring about a collision with China.
As it was, a general impetus was given to foreign travel and foreign
commerce ; and while the court was filled every year by strangers coming
peaceably from regions that Han-wu-ti had vainly endeavoured to subdue
by force of arms, colonies of traders established themselves in the southern
ports, as well as along the continental trade routes.
In 648 a.d. a kingdom hitherto unknown sent ambassadors, who are
described as tall, martial men with red hair and blue eyes ; and they had
been preceded by messengers from a kingdom in the far North-west, where
the days are long and the nights short, and not dark, even when the sun
has set, because of the twilight that never leaves the horizon. About
the year 700 a.d. a market for strangers was opened at Canton, and an
1 The famous Harun al Raschid, 786-808 a.d., correspondent also of Charlemagne.
Gaubil's Histoire des Thang, 798 A.D. : Mint, cone, les Chinois, vol. xvi. p. 144.

1 4o OWNERSHIP IN CHINA,
imperial commission appointed to levy duties. In 714 a.d. we hear of a
petition of foreign merchants, arriving by way of the southern sea, which
is forwarded from the coast in quite modern fashion for the emperor's con
sideration. It set forth all the precious things which the merchants could
bring from the countries of the West, and represented them as only desirous
of collecting medicinal drugs and simples. Unfortunately for the traders,
they arrived at the beginning of a new reign, when a vigorous attempt had
been made to put down the luxury of the court, and the Emperor, after
proscribing the use of gold and silver ornaments, had given directions
for a great " burning of the vanities " at the gate of the palace. Hence,
when he proposed to send one of the censors to question the strangers, he
was reminded of the praiseworthy indifference shown by the ancient kings
to useless curiosities and the interested pleas of foreign merchants, and it
was concluded to take no further notice of the petition.
Foreign trade continued to exist on sufferance, but so far as the Chinese
were concerned, it was limited by the attitude of the Government to a
moderate exportation of staple commodities, paid for in foreign coin or
precious metals. What China had to sell was much more important to the
Western nations than anything she or her rulers could be prevailed upon to
buy ; and so long as the trade dealt with surplus manufactures, like silk, or
natural products, like musk or rhubarb, and did not endanger the local
food supply, it was not interfered with. In 794 a.d. complaints were made
that trade was leaving Canton for Cochin China, but the traders' schemes
for recovering or pursuing it were discouraged by the Government, which
opined that there must have been intolerable extortions used to drive it
away, or a want of natural inducements to bring it, and quoted the Shoo :
" Do not prize strange commodities too much, and persons will come from
remote parts."
Arab geographers and travellers of the 9th century show what a develop
ment had been reached by foreign commerce under this modified freedom.
The Jewish merchants described by Ibn Khordadbeh as speaking Persian,
Latin, Greek, Arab, Spanish, Slavonic, and Lingua franca, and trading by
sea and land to the remotest regions, had their representatives at Canton ;
and the four trade routes, enumerated by Sir Henry Yule,1 enabled all
the great commercial communities to try their hand at the China trade.
The first of these routes led from the Mediterranean over the Isthmus of
Suez, and onwards by sea ; another reached the Indian sea via Antioch,
Bagdad and Bussora and the Persian Gulf ; a third followed the coast of
Africa by land from Tangiers to Egypt and thence by Damascus to
Bagdad, while the fourth led south of the Caspian Sea and north of the
central Asian desert to the gates of the Great Wall. The Chinese traders
either met the Western merchants at Ceylon, or themselves came as far as
the mouth of the Euphrates.
1 Cathay, and the Way Thither, vol. ii. p. 559. Another indication of the range of
Chinese influence is given by the Chinese version of the Yenisei inscriptions (Acad.,
Jan. 20, 1S94) which shows the monuments (bearing other inscriptions in an unknown
alphabet) to have been erected to princes of a Turk dynasty, circ. 730 a.d.

THE TANG DYNASTY. i4I
The account of Chinese manners and customs given by two Arab
travellers in the middle of the 9th century is particularly interesting, as they
are the first eye-witnesses whose impressions we are able to compare with
the sketches of the black-haired people, as painted by themselves, upon
which we have hitherto been obliged to rely. Their standard of civiliza
tion must of course be based upon that of the Caliphate, which in 851 a.d.
was already past its prime, but still outwardly magnificent, and in material
civilization ahead of any Christian court in the West. Every traveller in
China, we are told,1 is furnished with a pass for himself and his goods, so
that the latter cannot be carried off. The Chinese "administer justice
with great strictness in all their tribunals," and both parties to a suit are
warned that they will be beaten if guilty of perjury. When any dearth
makes the necessaries of life very dear, " then does the king open his store
houses and sell all sorts of provisions much cheaper than they are to be
had at market," 2 and hence no scarcity can be of long continuance.
The Chinese " have gold, silver, pearls, silk, and rich stuffs in great
abundance, but they consider them only as movables and merchandise,
and copper pieces are the only current coin." 3 The men " adorn their
girdles " with these things and with tortoise-shell, and ivory, and these
girdles and rich apparel used to be buried with their kings and princes ;'
" but this custom is now no more " because of thieves who dug them up.
The same writer says that there is no land tax in China — a mistake which
would be excusable if his inquiries were limited to the commercial towns
of which the statement would be true. Another remark is very significant
of the difference between China- and other Oriental countries where
diseased mendicancy is so common that the absence of it strikes a
traveller with surprise : " Scarce a one-eyed or a blind person is to be
seen or any one subject to the like afflictions. " 4
The populousness of the fertile plains was then as now an object of
¦remark; the villages seemed so close as almost to touch, and the cocks
answer each other continuously from hamlet to hamlet for 100 leagues
together.5 The people " are divided among themselves into families and
tribes like the Arabs and some other nations, and they know each other
by the difference of their descents. No one marries in his own tribe, and
a man of one family espouses not a woman of the same; but as if, for
example, a man of the family of Robayat marries into that of Modzar, and
inversely a Modzar conjoins with a Robayat. They are of opinion that
such alliances add to the nobility of the children." The last sentence
seems to show that tradition had not yet lost sight of the reason which had
led to the general adoption of the rule, under the Chow Dynasty, when
intermarriages within the narrow limits of the hamlet were, if unchecked,
almost sure to result in physical degeneracy. Allowing for a moderate
1 Ancient Accounts of India and China by two Mahommedan travellers who went to
those parts in the o.th century, translated from the Arabic by Eusebius Renaudot, p. 26.
2 lb., p. 24. 8 lb., p. 20.
* lb., p. 37. 5 lb., p. 62. Cf. Mencius, Life and Works, p. 161.

i42 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
proportion of travellers' wonders and misunderstandings, there can be no
doubt that our two Arabs saw and admired a China very like that of later
travellers, and corresponding in external features to that which is more
completely portrayed by native historians.
The first of the memoirs was written in 851 a.d. : by 877, according to
the second writer, the Arab trade with China was interrupted by the internal
troubles which had "put a stop to the justice and righteousness there
formerly practised." Two rebel armies were, in fact, ravaging Southern
China, and one of the rebels, having vainly demanded to be installed as
governor of Canton, besieged and captured that rich and populous town ;
and, according to the Arab account, massacred the whole of its large
foreign population, of Jews, Mahommedans, Christians, and Parsees. As
many as 100,000 are said to have perished, and the numbers are defended
on the ground that an accurate register of the strangers was kept for the
sake of the poll tax levied on them. It is scarcely possible, however, that
so large a foreign colony should have been tolerated in a single town, and
the numbers given may have included both the Chinese servants of
the foreigners and all the natives exclusively engaged in dealings with
them. The fall of the Tang Dynasty, which followed in 908 a.d., co
operated with the decline of the Arab power to break off the growing
intercourse between South China and the Western nations by way of the
Indian seas. The journey was too long to be undertaken without the
assurance of a peaceful market, while the supply of merchandise itself
must have fallen short for the time, as the rebel armies are accused of the
supreme barbarism of cutting down the mulberry trees.
§ 3. Literature, Orthodoxy, and Buddhism.
It may be doubted whether the political influence of the literati stood
as high during this period as under the Hans. They had to contend for
the maintenance of their spiritual authority against Buddhists and Taoists,
and both they and their rivals had comparatively little to do with the
other struggle being waged meanwhile between courtiers, condottieri, and
feudalizing nobles for the spoils of empire. Confucianism alone was not
compromised in the disasters of the dynasty, since it alone had not con
tributed to produce them. The system of examination as a means ol
selecting officers was not condemned, for it had not been fairly tried,
though the machinery of the examinations themselves had been elaborated,
as if in preparation for a time when its importance would be more fully
recognised. The so-called Imperial College consisted of six higher schools, to which
youths were admitted between the ages of 14 and 19; the total curriculum
extended at furthest over io| years. The first school received 300
students, and corresponded to that in which the emperor's sons were
anciently supposed to receive their education along with the sons of
higher officers of State; it was open to the sons of lower, and the sons,

THE TANG DYNASTY. 143
grandsons and great-grandsons of higher officers. The second school, or
"Great College," admitted 500 sons or remote descendants of inferior
officers. The third, or " College of the four gates," received 1,300 students
— 500 drawn from the class of landowners and inferior officials, while 800
were " men of the people " distinguished in the examinations held all over
the kingdom. The fourth, or school of laws, had only 50 students, and
the schools of writing and arithmetic only 30 each, all of whom were
taken either from among the people or the sons of the lower officers, and
these were doubtless intended to provide a kind of technical training for
clerks on the permanent staff of Government boards.1
The actual number of the students probably fluctuated with the
imperial liberality and the reputation of the schools, and it was said to
have reached 10,000 in the reign of Tai-tsong (629-649). Students of the
great college who distinguished themselves might be promoted to the
college of superior dignity nominally reserved to the sons of high officers.
In 729 a.d. we meet with the complaint that correct pronunciation was
more attended to than the meaning of words, and Han-yu pleads for less
respect of persons and greater strictness in the examinations. But the
purely literary and unpractical character of the tests was not yet acquiesced
in. Three papers, so to speak, were set — one in the classics, one to test
the candidate's style and literary attainments, and one containing five
questions relating to affairs of the day,2 — to one of which the famous
denunciation of the eunuchs was an answer.
By an edict of 706 a.d. the payment to be made by scholars to their
teachers was laid down.3 Tuition has always been cheap in China, where
the remuneration of the learned professions is still as nearly on a level
with that of the mechanical arts as it was in mediaeval Europe ; and the
presents of silk, wine, and meat required from the students were very
modest in amount. The reason for prescribing the payment probably was
that the State had hitherto paid the teachers' salary, and that it was an
innovation for the professors to depend on the students' fees. The imperial
library was founded in 723 a.d., but the funds at its disposal must have
been scanty, as the buildings when injured by rain were not repaired. The
famous Han-lin college, which now furnishes the imperial historiographers,
examiners, and directors of public instruction, was founded in 740 a.d. to
" answer the emperor's questions about language and literature."4 The
period was one of considerable literary activity, and the brilliant original
writings of the day distracted attention from the mechanical cares of
bibliography, so that many works of repute were found to have disappeared
when the erudite compilers and commentators of the Sung Dynasty began
their researches. Ssema-tching, who flourished at this period, is the first
1 Id Instruction publique en Chine, p. 256.
2 lb., pp. 276-9.
» lb., p. 283. .
4 lb., p. 305. Pauthier gives 712 A.D. as the date of the foundation. But its com
plete constitution might easily occupy a generation.

144 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
historian, at least the first whose works survive, who gives an account of
the legendary period preceding the sufficiently mythical emperor Fou-lji.
In 736 a.d. an important change was made, which on the one hand
raised the standard of the examinations and on the other diminished the
chances of the successful candidates obtaining office. The direction of
the examinations was transferred from the " minister of Offices " to the
minister of Rites, presumably because the former allowed extraneous
circumstances to weigh in the bestowal of degrees. But as the bestowal
of office still rested with the department by which the officers were
employed, a constant feud between the two was kept up for several
centuries. Candidates who had passed successfully the examination con
ducted by the Board of Rites were only thereby qualified for appointment
to office ; their actual nomination for active service rested with the Board
of Offices, which, not being able to employ all the successful candidates,
used its discretionary powers of rejection in a way which the mass of
graduates resented as unfair, even when preceded by a third examination.1
In the middle of the 8th century orthodoxy was exposed to a danger
like that which threatened under the Souy Dynasty, when public examina
tions were held in the works of Buddhist theology. Hiouen-tsong's
partiality for Taoism showed itself by the attempt to add the works of
Lao-tze to the official literature, and between 741 and 763 a.d., students
were allowed to " take up " the works of this philosopher, either instead of or
in addition to the regular classics.3 In the next reign this concession was
revoked, and we hear no more of Taoist degrees till the beginning of
the 1 2th century; but learning was affronted by the appointment of an
ambitious eunuch as examiner, and scholarship was so ill paid, that pro
fessors complained they had to eke out their salaries by taking to
agriculture. That the importance of success in the examinations on the
whole continued to increase, is proved by the precautions first taken at
this time, by order of the Empress Wu-heou, to prevent favouritism or
corruption, by concealing the authorship of the papers given in.
The career of Hiouen-thsang, the famous traveller, who was born 602 a.d.,
is thoroughly illustrative of the mixed tendencies of the age. His father
had wisely withdrawn from office in view of the prevailing disorder, and ,
passed his time in private study. His grandfather had presided over the
Imperial College under the Thsi Dynasty, and received by way of salary the
taxes of an important town ; and his great-grandfather had held a governor
ship under the most enlightened of the northern dynasties, the Yuen Wei.
He thus belonged by birth to the class from which successful students and
officers are drawn, and he was taught to read by his father out of the
classical books. But one of his elder brothers had entered a Buddhist
convent, and saw in the grave and studious boy an excellent recruit for the
propagation of the same faith. And while still under thirteen, he was
diverted from the study of the classics to that of Buddhist books of
devotion. Soon afterwards, the emperor issued a sudden decree, com-
1 V Instruction publique en Chine, p. 310. 2 lb., p. 289.

THE TANG DYNASTY. 145
manding the ordination of twenty-seven monks, at Loyang, and by a
curious jumble of ideas, the privilege was to be accorded to the successful
candidates in an examination. There were several hundred competitors,
all remarkable for their learning, and Hiouen-thsang, though too young to
he allowed to compete, was accepted without examination, on account of
his promising appearance and discreet conversation. For the next few
years he devoted himself to study, and obtained a great reputation in
theological circles.
It is after all no great reflection on the intelligence of a Chinese con
temporary of St Columban, that he was more attracted by the doctrines of
Buddhism at its best than by Confucianism at its worst. But the ration
alistic bent of the Chinese mind showed itself with Hiouen-thsang in the
elaboration of doubts and difficulties, which, fortunately for his spiritual
peace, admitted of being traced to an imperfect possession of the sacred
texts. And it was for the satisfaction of these doubts that he determined
upon the journey to India, by way of Central Asia, to which we are in
debted for the Si-Yu-ki,1 and the pilgrim himself for a cosmopolitan
celebrity. He started at the age of twenty-seven (629 a.d.), early in the
reign of Tai-tsong, to whom he had applied without success for per
mission to leave the country. He returned in 645 with twenty- two horse-
loads of books and statues, and relics innumerable. He was favourably
received at court, where the best emperors were always eager to cross-
examine intelligent travellers about the customs, products, and government
of foreign lands ; and he was even invited to lay aside the " yellow
mantle " and abandon the religious life, so that he might be employed as
a minister of State.
His answer is curious, and shows that the most disinterested votaries of
the new law had not thought of supplanting the Confucian hierarchy in
the regulation of secular affairs. He had " left his family " 2 in childhood,
and ever since devoted himself with ardour to the study of the mysteries
of the law of Buddha. He knew nothing of the doctrine of Confucius,
which was the life and soul of the government, and if he left his vocation
for a secular life, he would resemble a vessel under full canvas, which left
the sea, and tried to sail on dry land ; he would not only fail, but would
destroy himself in the attempt.
This glimpse of things from the Buddhist point of view is an instructive
supplement to that presented by the official histories. Three years before
the departure of Hiouen-thsang for the countries of the West, a scholar
named Fou-y had addressed a memorial to the emperor Kao-tsong,
against the two heretical sects of Buddha and Lao-tze. He accuses the
first of despising the virtues of loyalty and filial piety, and, without carica
turing the doctrines he attacks, he briefly accentuates their fundamental
incompatibility with the Chinese ideal of family life and social duty. Both
1 Memoires sur les contrles occidentales traduites du Sanscrit en Chinois en Van 648 par
Hiouen-thsang et du Chinois en Francais, par M. Stanislas Julien, 1858.
! I.e. entered a convent.
VOL. II. — P.C. L

146 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
doctrines are accused of promoting an immoral quietism, resignation to
the law of Fo taking the place of a wholesome regard for the natural
system of rewards and punishments administered by princes who under
stand the laws of Heaven and Earth. The Taoist dreams of immortality
have the same effect in making men indifferent to the consequences of
their actions. All the evils which had fallen on China since the decadence
of the Hans are attributed to the spread of false doctrines, and the fate of
Wu-ti, the founder of the Leang Dynasty, is quoted as a warning.1
In conclusion, Fou-y points out that there are 100,000 Buddhist monks,
and as many nuns, living in celibacy, and that if they were obliged to
marry each other there would be 100,000 families to contribute soldiers to
the defence of the country and labourers for its support.2 To please the
emperor, who was supposed to have a penchant for Taoism, the nobles
to whom this memorial was referred, in Chinese fashion, for consideration
and report, concurred, with one exception, in condemning the proposition ;
but the instincts of the emperor were stronger in Kao-tsong than those of
the sectary, and he could not approve of having so many of his subjects
withdrawn from productive pursuits. The local officers were therefore
commanded to ascertain the number of the religious orders, with a view
to reducing it, and they were instructed to tolerate one temple only in
each town of the first class, and presumably, none elsewhere.
Nearly 200 years after the memorial of Fou-y, the unsatisfactory state of
the revenue, even in time of peace, led to an inquiry ; and the ministers
reported that there were at that moment (811 a.d.) 800,000 troops in the
empire, and that a full half of the rest of the population consisted of
merchants, priests, and others, who did not cultivate the ground, so that
really three-tenths of the population did the work necessary to feed and
clothe the remaining seven.3 The number of officials had increased
to no less than 10,000, and their salaries had been gradually increased by
raising towns of the third rank to the second, and so on, in order that
their governors might be paid the salaries belonging to the higher grade.
Formerly, mandarins of the first rank received a monthly allowance of
1,000 large measures of grain, and 3,000 strings of cash ; but in the
reign of Tai-tsong (762-778 a.d.), the latter amount was trebled, and
now the governor of the least third-class town received several thousand
strings monthly. While learning was thus honoured — for these posts of
growing value were being granted in larger measure than before to the
successful candidates in the examinations — the literati in and out of office
must have watched with comparative equanimity the spread of Buddhism, a
doctrine which, in the words of a writer of the period, " admits no envious
rivalry for place or power." The remedy proposed by the censors was
simple and effective, being merely to reduce the number and the salaries of
1 Like pious princes in India, he pledged his own person as a security for promised gifts,
which was of course, in Chinese eyes, an intolerable degradation of the imperial dignity.
2 De Mailla, vi. p. 29.
3 lb-, p. 391-

THE TANG DYNASTY. 147
the official class ; but after this display of impartiality, there was a notable
revival of anti- Buddhist zeal.
This memorial was presented in the reign of Hien-tsong (805-820 a.d.).
The Emperor himself was an ardent Buddhist, and received with ex
travagant demonstrations of honour and respect a relic of Buddha,
consisting of a finger which was supposed to unbend itself once in thirty
years. Han-yu, otherwise called Han-wen-kung, a brilliant writer of the
period, known as the Prince of Literature, addressed an indignant memorial
to the emperor, recapitulating the warnings of history, and pointing out
that Buddha himself was a man from the barbarous West, whom, if living,
the emperor could only receive with moderate and appropriate courtesy, in
which the general public would take no part. How unfitting, then, that
when the man is dead, the reception of one of his bones should be
treated as a matter of imperial importance, and an occasion of national
rejoicing ! Han-yu concludes by defying the power of this foreign idol,
much as Christian missionaries in barbarous lands were wont to do, in the
hope of proving the impotence of false gods to execute judgment on the
blasphemers of their claims. Unfortunately for the argument on this
occasion, Fo had the emperor for an ally ; and the bold memorialist, barely
escaping with his life, was sent in virtual exile to the barbarous South,
where he was appointed to the governorship of a town in Kwang-tung.1
This was a favourite way of punishing inconveniently scrupulous
officials; and though some of them indulged in Ovidian laments over their
hard fate, others, like Han-yu, solaced themselves by putting in practice, at
a safe distance from envious eunuchs and mercenary rivals, all those
maxims of good government which they had vainly tried to carry out at
court. The local popularity which, then as now, rewarded a disinterested
administrator was a sort of compensation, and there was always the
probability of the exile being recalled, by another turn of the wheel ol
fortune, as was the case with Han-yu in the next reign. When we
remember how much the Roman Empire suffered from the oppressive and
extortionate administration of corrupt provincial governors, we are almost
tempted to see a kind of Macchiavellian cunning in this way of employing
honest officials wherever their honesty was not inconvenient to the corrup
tion at headquarters. Whether the policy was deliberately followed or
not, it was certainly one of the causes which contributed to the spread and
consolidation of a civilized order in the more distant parts of the empire
during this and other dynasties.
On the subject of the prevailing latitudinarianism, Han-yu complains
that even Confucianists talk of their master as having shown respect for
Lao-tze and Buddha — though the worship of the latter was not known
in China till the eastern Hans— and he denounces, as the great evil of
the day, the craving after the supernatural, which Confucianism most
1 For Life of Han-yu, by T. Walters, see N. China Branch of R. As. Soe, N.S., vii.
p. 165. 'Ihe Anli-Buddhist Memorial is translated by Mr. Giles, in The Celestial
Empire.

148 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
emphatically discourages.1 But the a priori arguments of the ancients are
rather taken for granted by the later controversialists, and Han-yu insists
principally upon the practical disadvantages of tolerating two new classes
of non-producers. Anciently the people were divided into four classes,
the scholars, husbandmen, artisans, and traders, of whom the first only had
to be maintained out of the labours of the rest ; but now six classes have
to be maintained by three, so who can wonder if crime and beggary
prevail ?
Another brilliant writer, a friend and contemporary of Han-yu, had
consorted with educated Buddhists and found much to approve in their
doctrines of morality, while he sympathised with their taste for a life of
calm study and contemplation. But though a scholar might lead a life
of studious contemplation if his means allowed, or if his philosophy was
sturdy enough to put up with peasant fare, such a life was not the highest
ideal of a Chinese statesman. Self-culture was a part of the duty of every
citizen, but the proof of eminence in that art was the production of a self
admirably adapted for the service of society, a " man useful to others," %
and such service was the duty as well as the privilege of the select few.
For individuals, who did nothing but try to save their own souls, to
demand to be maintained at the expense of the community while so
engaged, was not only absurd but anti-social. And in fact, so long as the
quarrel between religious asceticism and political secularism continued in
China, the secularists posed consistently as the champions of social duty
as opposed to spiritual egotism.
The next attack upon the new religions came from a different quarter, and
was aimed at the Buddhists only, by Wu-tsong (841-864 a.d.), an emperor
who shared the weakness of his house for the Taoist sect. He began by
ordering the destruction of all pagodas erected by private persons without
authority, and renewed the prohibition against tolerating more than one
temple of the sect in provincial towns. The two temples allowed to the
1 The subjects, we are told, on which the Master did not talk were extraordinary
things, feats of strength, disorder, and spiritual beings. When a disciple asked him
about serving the Spirits of the dead, he answered : "While you are not able to serve
men, how can you serve their spirits?" (Analects, xi. 11). And when the indiscreet
scholar proceeded "to ask about death : " "While you do not know about life, how
can you know about death ? " was the reply. Still more ingenious is the recorded
evasion of the question whether the dead have knowledge of the honours and sacrifices
paid them. The Master replied : " If I were to say that the dead have such knowledge,
I am afraid that filial sons and dutiful grandsons would injure their substance in paying
the last offices to the departed ; and if I were to say that the dead have no such know
ledge, I am afraid lest unfiliai sons should leave their parents unburied. You need
not seek to know whether the dead have knowledge or not ; hereafter you will know
it yourself." In the same spirit it is explained in the Li Ki, that offerings are made to
relieve the feelings of the survivors, not to supply the wants of the departed. " Does
he know that the spirit will enjoy (them)? He is guided only by his pure and reverent
heart." It was observed that the dead were never seen to partake of the offerings, and
accordingly, it was proper for the " Personator of the dead " (see for this personage Sac.
Books, iii. p. 301) to " eat what the spirits have left," accepting the provisions as a gift
from them.
2 The Master said, " The meritorious services of Han Ki were the greatest of all under
Heaven . . . therefore he said of himself that he was simply ' a man useful to
others.' " (Li Ki, xxix. ; S.B., xxviii. p. 340.)

THE TANG DYNASTY. 149
capital were limited to thirty priests each, the remainder to five or ten ; and
the inmates of all the other monasteries, male and female, to the number
of 265,000, were commanded to return to their homes and resume their
place in the taxpaying community. In all, 44,600 monasteries and temples
were condemned, of which only a tithe had received official sanction. The
number of the monasteries is not given separately ; but judging from the
numbers of their inmates it must have increased formidably since the
middle of the 7th century, when, according to the memoirs of Hiouen-
thsang, there were 3,716 convents in the whole Empire, and the ordination
of 18,500 monks and nuns, authorized upon the traveller's intercession,
was sufficient to make up for the depopulation of the monasteries during
the stormy close of the Souy Dynasty.
The convent lands were confiscated, the materials of the temples used
for the repair of public buildings, the copper statues melted down to make
money, and the lesser movables most probably annexed by the officials
sent to carry out the Imperial edict. The slaves of the monasteries, to
the number of 150,000, were set free, and, like the monks, added to the
ranks of the common people, who were liable to the payment of land and
labour tax. The stringency of these anti-Buddhist edicts was partly re
laxed at the beginning of a new reign in the following year, but the
indulgence was abused so that in 852 the Chinese were again forbidden to
take Buddhist orders.
The intercourse with the West, which was closer under this dynasty than
at any former period, had opened the door to other strange religions, two
of which were dealt with in a second edict. The priests of foreign origin
were to be conveyed to the frontier nearest their own country, while the
Chinese converts were required, like the Buddhists, to return to their
secular duties. As there were 3,000 priests or monks affected by the
edicts, it is obvious that the congregations cannot have consisted ex
clusively of foreigners, and the clash of different proselytizing sects, com
peting for the contributions of the ignorant populace, was particularly
abhorrent to the rulers. The banished religions were those of Ta-tsin,
which is described as " a kind of Fo religion," and is certainly Christianity,
and that of Mou-hou-fou, a name which suggests Mohamedanism, though
the description given answers better to some form of Magianism or Mani-
chaeism J imported from Persia.
It is curious that at the same time (845 a.d.) the control of the surviving
monasteries was put under the Chinese Foreign Office, for the very logical
reason that " the religion of Fo came from India." The official religion
was a part of the internal polity of the realm, and the Board of Rites could
no more be asked to look after foreign superstitions than a European
minister of religion to look after secular education.
1 According to Masudi, the Manicha:ans had considerable influence in Eastern
Turkestan, as late as 944 A.D. Kinistan, a name sometimes supposed to refer to
Samarcand, is also used (Bundahesh, xv. 29; S.B., v. pp. 59. 296) for faimk, the
country of the Seni or Chinese ; and there are other indications in the 1 ehlevi texts ot
Persian intercourse with China and Chinese dependencies.

150 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
§ 4. Agrarian Economy of the Tang.
The encyclopaedist Ma-twan-lin mentions the period between 627 and
649 a.d. as the last, during which the Government attempted to restore
the old agrarian customs. It may be doubted whether the revival can
have been actually carried out all over the empire, but the intention was
to give every householder one lot of land for perpetual, and another, con
sisting of orchard, for temporary ownership, the last answering to the duty
fields of the Souy. These lots as a rule were to consist of eighty and
twenty mow respectively, and the repartition took place after the last of the
crops were gathered in. The restrictions on sales, enforced by the Yuen
Wei, were retained, but land might be pledged by an absentee owner, who
had no natural representatives to occupy it for him, and a cultivator,
desirous of migrating to another district, might sell his allotment and
employ the purchase money in obtaining another elsewhere.
The limits on purchases were evaded by rich men who bought land in
the name of agents or farmers, and the practice of sub-letting, which reached
a considerable development under the Sung, seems to have originated at
this time, as the reserves of State land became exhausted and the low
official rent ceased to act as a check upon private owners. The fixity of
tenure allowed by the State to its tenants contributed to this result, for
land, let to one generation after another, came to be regarded as private
property subject to land tax, which it resembled in all particulars except
the original title.
It had formerly been a maxim of State that the land tax should be paid
by the occupier, who was normally also the owner ; but as the effect of the
redistribution of lands at the beginning of the dynasty wore off, some of
the cultivators fell again into poverty and the land tax into arrears. Yang-
jin, one of the innovating financiers, then hazarded the startling doctrine
that it did not matter who paid the taxes provided enough was paid.1 He
therefore introduced a new plan of taxing artisans and tradesmen, so as to
make the personal tax of these classes as remunerative as the land tax. A
great development of trade is said to have followed this measure, so we
must suppose that previously the Government had put difficulties in the
way of the cultivators leaving the land for other pursuits. The same
principle served to justify the indulgence now extended to the rich pro
prietors who undertook to pay the personal taxes of their dependants,
while taking their chance of evading the land tax altogether. The increase
in the amount levied gave the landless poor an additional motive for
accepting the protection thus offered, without regard to its probable
ulterior results.
Taxation was on the whole much heavier than under the Hans. The
demand for money payments in 766 a.d. was in itself burdensome, and
when three years later this was commuted into a biennial grain payment,
the proportion of the produce taken, in the case of the more fertile lands,
1 Arbeiten d. R. Ges., p. 20 ; Journ. As., 1838, p. 300.

THE TANG DYNASTY. i5i
was nearer 25 than 10 per cent. Another account describes the people as
divided into three classes, each comprising three sections and paying a
kind of graduated income tax ranging from 4,000 tsien in the highest of
the first class to 500 in the lowest of the third class.1 The rate of pay
ment is thus twenty times as much as that paid by an ordinary cultivator
under the Hans ; but the great falling off in the number of the taxpayers
is the cause of the apparent increase.
Yang-jin, already quoted as maintaining that it did not matter who paid
the taxes, gave, in the early years of Te-tsong (780 a.d.), the formal sanction
of the exchequer to the feudalizing tendency of rich landowners, by taxing
the estate as a whole, and making the landlord responsible for taxes levied
on all the landless families settled under his protection. Free labourers
with no fixed settlement or occupation were called "strangers;" and as
this class increased in numbers, the loss to the revenue, from the impos
sibility of taxing the migratory poor, became considerable.
The new measure, though taxing land which had previously escaped,
was not unpopular with the rich, because it gave for the first time a kind
of legal sanction to the system of "agglomeration;" and by allowing, so
to speak, the lord of the manor to stand between the State and the culti
vators, it sanctioned his usurpation of those imperial functions which had
hitherto been sedulously guarded. The State, in fact, waived its right of
determining what burdens should be imposed on the peasantry, in order
to facilitate the collection of revenue, and the result was much the same as
in the case of mere deliberate attempts at farming the taxes. The new
feudal chiefs used their power to make themselves independent of the
Crown, the land tax became a sort of tribute, to be refused by those who
were strong enough to do so with impunity, and the gradual decay of the
imperial authority which led to the fall of the dynasty, was held to begin
with this surrender of direct influence.
In somewhat the same way, though more legitimately, the revival of the
village system was used as a means of increasing the corvees, which at
this time formed a serious and unpopular burden. The payment required
in lieu of personal services was three times as much as that paid for the
duty fields, and instead of the three days' labour required by the Chow Li,
it was regarded as a concession to demand only twenty-two days' labour in
the year. Individual labourers apparently had succeeded in evading the
demands on them, and the labour tax was therefore assessed upon the
village as a whole, so that the local authorities were obliged in self-defence
to force all the inhabitants to contribute. The central government was
apt to transfer unpopular duties like this to the village authorities in other
cases. Thus, for example, in 683 a.d., when the issue of counterfeit
money was punished by death, the neighbours in towns and villages were
made responsible for each other, so as to prevent tacit complicity.
As an encouragement to agriculture, newly reclaimed land was allowed
to be held free of tax, and it is significant of the depressed state in which
1 Journ. A:., I.e., p. 299.

152 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
the cultivators found themselves, that this permission was followed by
complaints that the old taxed land was being abandoned in favour of the
free wastes. Several memorials were addressed to Tai-tsong, against the
oppression caused by public works, and he was reminded of the full
treasuries left by the deposed Souy Dynasty, to show how little a ruler is
likely to gain by economies made at the expense of his subjects. Through
out the prosperous times of the dynasty, it seems to have been a standing
source of surprise and disappointment to the more thoughtful politicians,
that the common people were not as much better off as was to be expected
from the aggrandizement of the empire ; and the only explanation that
presents itself is that the Government was more expensive as well as
stronger than its predecessors.
The emperor Te-tsong (779-802 a.d.) is reported to have held a conversa
tion with a peasant, whom he met, when incognito, on a hunting expedition,
which explains why even the best days of the Tang Dynasty fail to rank
among the golden ages of popular tradition. Instead of the lawful tribute
collected twice a year from the cultivator, this rustic complains that he is
burdened with all sorts of mysterious and additional charges. He has to
deliver the grain at court himself, without being paid a better price than
when the Government collected it, though he has either to hire animals to
bring it or wear out his own on the journey ; and when by any chance a
favourable harvest might make amends for his losses, he is obliged to sell
his surplus at the lowest price and buy it back again at the highest, the
first time he is in want.1 In other words, the abuse which Ma-twan-lin
describes under the name of "grain purchase by agreement" was rife at
this time, and the so-called voluntary contract was forced on the helpless
cultivators by the ever-growing army of tax collectors.
An apologue, by Lin-tsung-yuan (773-819), the philosophic defender of
Buddhism against the diatribes of Han-wen-kung, represents the people as
suffering quite as much from the indiscreet zeal of their rulers as from
direct oppression. A certain market gardener2 is described as famous be
cause everything he plants is sure to thrive, and bear fruit or flowers early
and abundantly. He is asked to describe his method, and explains that
it consists only in letting things alone, in not worrying the plants with
watching or training, but allowing them to grow as nature prompts when
they are once well planted in good soil. He is asked if these principles
can be applied to government. " Ah," he replied, " I only understand
nursery gardening; government is not my trade. Still, in the village
where I live, the officials are for ever issuing all kinds of orders, as if
greatly compassionating the people, though really to their utter injury.
Morning and night the underlings come round and say, ' His honour bids
1 De Mailla, vi. p. 350. In the same reign it was complained of as a serious griev
ance that an avaricious minister failed to provide the troops called out for a campaign
with full rations, in addition to the pay reserved for the maintenance of their families.
It was estimated that their ordinary pay was practically tripled during their time of
active service. (Ib., p. 331.)
- Herbert Giles, Gems of Chinese Literature, p. 148.

THE TANG DYNASTY. IS3
us urge on your ploughing, hasten your planting, and superintend your
harvest. Do not delay with your spinning and weaving. Take care of
your children. Rear poultry and pigs. Come together when the drum
beats. Be ready at the sound of the rattle.' Thus are we poor people
badgered from morn till eve. We have not a moment to ourselves. How
could any one flourish or develop under such conditions ? "
The fable, which is evidently by a disciple of Chuang-tze, has an 18th
century sort of sound, which makes it difficult to realize that it comes to us
from the age of Egbert, but there is at least no difficulty in understanding
how even a well-meaning oriental Government at that date might over-
govern and over-burden its subjects in the name of progress. Like the
contemporary secularism of Han-yu, the fabulist's belief in free industry
survives in modern China, less as a speculative opinion than as an organic
habit of mind and manners.
There is a Chinese proverb : " When swords are rusty and spades
bright, prisons empty and granaries full, the steps of the temples covered
with mud and the courts of the tribunals filled with grass, doctors on foot
and bakers on horseback, when old men and children abound, the empire is
well governed." Except with regard to the frequentation of temples, the
Tang Dynasty did not as a rule stand very high in its conformity to these
tests. The whole period was one of increasing commercial activity rather
than one of increasing industrial prosperity. Both industry and commerce
were hampered by Government interference, which was at least as often as
not of an interested kind, and, as we have seen, resulted in the conversion
of some of the leading writers of the day to the doctrine of laissez faire in
its most extreme form.
But some of the legislation was honestly meant to check the danger of
excessive inequality in the distribution of wealth, to which the Government
had always been alive ; and even the clumsy restrictions on trade, in the
supposed interest of the treasury, had at worst the same tendency. No
country in the worid has really less to gain than China by foreign commerce,
and, blunder for blunder, it is less unintelligent for a Government which
distrusts the mercantile class to discourage trade by legislative restraints,
than for those vvhich intend to promote trade and manufactures to hamper
both by would-be protective regulations, such as were universally believed
in by European rulers till within the last century or two.
The Chinese method of utilizing experiments in the art " how not to
do it " is in the main negative. When legislation of one sort has missed
its aim or proved vexatious in fresh ways, the legislation is allowed to
drop ; it is not thought necessary to try a new plan at the risk of new
inconveniences. The State learns what to let alone, and the people profit
by their widening liberties to do for themselves what the Government had
failed to do for them. The result is that industry and commerce are at
the present moment more entirely left to themselves in China than in
any other civilized country, with in the main satisfactory results. But it
is only just to her earlier rulers to point out that this paradisaical state of

154 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
laissez faire was not reached by popular wisdom, in spite of State bungling,
but under cover of legislation, wise and otherwise, yet, in the main, de
signed to compass the identical results which now commend themselves to
public opinion in the Middle Kingdom. In other words, the experience
of China proves that the industrial condition of a country may be per
manently influenced by its legislation, when that legislation gives voice to
powerful and deep-rooted national tendencies.

CHAPTER XIII.
CHINESE FINANCE FROM THE HAN TO THE TANG DYNASTY.
The leading ideas and recurring difficulties of Chinese financiers did not
undergo any material change between the Han and the Tang Dynasties.
One of the chief difficulties of the Government, the prevalence of illicit
coining, was mainly owing to the simplicity of the mode, still in use, of
casting money — a process which was easily imitated. Some ancient moulds,
as well as coins, have been found, and in some cases the forger actually
renders a service to the antiquary by preserving a piece which is ancient
in everything except the date of casting. A curious bird-headed piece in
the British Museum is a forgery of this kind,1 representing a rare issue,
dated between the T'sin and the Han. The legend has some reference to
measures of corn, and it may possibly have been more like the tea or salt
bonds of later times than a regular money.
Another curious, half scarab-shaped piece is known only from Chinese
works. Members of the Han-lin College, towards the end of the Tang
Dynasty, deciphered, but did not interpret, the characters on it. The
collector must have begun his work in China with the literary revival of
the Han. Quotations from native catalogues of collections made in the
6th century a.d., are met with in recent native works, and M. Terrien de
la Couperie refers to five such of the present century which " are remark
able for the accuracy of their reproductions of coins, engraved from actual
rubbings."2 Indeed, it is probable that coins have been regarded as his
torical records, and consequently of value as such, for nearly as long as
they have been in use.
Twenty years after the establishment of the Han Dynasty, another
attempt at an enlarged issue was made with eight-tchu pieces ; eleven years
later Han-wu-ti issued cash of four tchu again ; but free trade in coin was
already permitted (177 B.C.) in the hope of putting down illicit coining.
It was only stipulated that private mints should conform to the official
standard of weight, shape, and purity.3 Under the Chow, kings and princes
had coined money in such quantities as suited themselves, leaving traders
and towns to provide for their own needs as they pleased. It was not till
the central authority was powerful enough for its issues to he generally pre
ferred that the temptation to fraudulent coining began ; and the toleration
1 Catalogue of Chinese Coins, p. xxi.
8 Mlmoire sur le Systeme monetaire des Chinois, par E. Biot, Journ. As., 1837, p. 447.
155

156 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
of free trade in money, which seems so paradoxical, all through the financial
history of China, is really to be explained by this early experience, that it
would not pay to counterfeit the money of the State, if there were a number
of equally popular mints open.
About the middle of the 2nd century b.c, a prince of Wei issued a success
ful round money with rimmed edges; and a coinage, of which no specimens
remain, was cast at the same time in North Sz'chuen, by Teng T'ung, the
man whose name stands as a proverb, like that of Croesus, for the uttermost
possibilities of wealth. He had a concession to work the copper mines of
Ya-chu-fu in that province ; and, while his money was preferred on account
of its purity to that of the Government, the great wealth he had accumulated
was regarded as a warning against the toleration of such monopolies in
private hands. In the year 135 B.C., free coining was again forbidden, and
ancient coins, knife, leaf, saddle, and other old currencies were demonetized.
In 119 a white metal currency of tin and silver was tried, and in the fol
lowing year Han-wu-ti issued the favourite tchu coinage, which remained
a standard down to the Tang Dynasty. The new cash were made with a
rim to prevent forgery. The edict of 135 must have been disregarded, for
Wu-ti issued another in 112 B.C., suppressing private mints, and ordaining
that the most skilful of the coiners should be employed in the Imperial
Mint. He at the same time appointed three officers to watch over the
currency, and the money issued at this period became, and long continued,
exceedingly popular. It must be admitted that the Chinese Government
was hardly dealt with in the matter of coining, for if it issued good money
it was clipped, and base coin made of the clippings, while if it issued bad
coins the people declined to use them, multiplying instead imitations of
the earlier issues it preferred. In 190 a.d., coins were cast like those of
Wu, only without the rim, which used to be clipped off.
It is almost incomprehensible that the nation which first invented
letters of credit, exchequer bonds and bank notes, should have been so
slow to adopt the use of money at all, and should have continued to limit
its currency to the tiny copper coins of which a hundred pounds worth
weighs a ton. Yet if the question is looked at, as the advisers of the best
emperors always sought to look at it, from the point of view of the small
cultivator's interest, it is not so evident what this class had to gain by the
introduction of a gold or silver coinage. So long as the Government
allowed the taxes to be paid in kind, the villagers only needed money to
effect occasional exchanges of produce, or for small marketings, both of
which might at times take the form of simple barter. The value of the
coins could hardly be too trifling when their chief function was to enable
one villager to pay another for a handful of seed or a pair of sandals.
The transactions of the merchant, who bought the produce of one dis
trict in order to sell it in another, were normally upon something the same
scale. The primitive merchant is little more than a carrier, and it is only
in the case of exceptional commodities, like rare drugs and precious stones
or metals, that the load, personally convoyed by a single dealer, can re-

CHINESE FINANCE. iS7
present much wealth. Any rudimentary tendency amongst traders to
convert their whole store of useful commodities, i.e. their private capital
into coin, to be spent in buying up commodities for sale at an advanced
price, would have seemed to the legislators of the period as a diversion
of industry from its proper functions, which should, as far as possible, be
discouraged and deprived of all convenient implements. As la petite culture
has been advocated by modern economists in the West, la petite commerce
would have been deliberately defended, by all the generations of Chinese
statesmen, whose policy has actually resulted in making every other China
man a little trader.
If the coinage was scarce, inconvenient, or unpopular, the people readily
improvised standards of value, and used handfuls of grain for small chan°e,
and lengths of silk for larger values, as, to this day, salt is used in Yunnan
and brick tea in Mongolia. Additional taxes, however oppressive, did not
increase the demand for coin, as salt, iron, wine, and other articles, on
which duties were from time to time imposed, were all as acceptable to the
treasury as the normal payments of grain. A small token coinage seemed
to meet the practical needs of the people, and the ideal of the Government
thenceforward seems to have been, more or less consciously, to bar the way
to accumulation by not recognising money as a commodity at all.
The Chinese emperor had less to gain than most European princes by
tampering with the currency, because there was no public debt, and most
Government expenses were borne locally, while salaries still consisted
partly in allowances of grain. And provided the Government were honestly
intent on doing so, it would have no more difficulty in limiting the issue
of a token coinage, which represented the circulating surplus of silk and
grain, than in limiting the issue of a token coinage representing the pro
portion of gold or silver available as money. The functions of such a
token coinage are necessarily limited ; but it is admitted by economists
that a community, which agreed to use the tokens as machinery for the
exchange of commodities, would not find the comparative value of the
goods themselves affected by its substitution for metal.
Some of the economic heresies of the Chinese seem to have been on
the whole original and peculiar to themselves. The words used to de
scribe money as cheap or dear have reference to weight, not price or
scarcity. Money is "heavy," i.e. dear, when a coin of fixed nominal
value will buy a larger weight of commodities than usual, and it is " light,"
or cheap, when the reverse is the case. But by a confusion of ideas,
such as abound in the history of economic speculation, it seems to have
been thought that the value of the money, or its purchasing power, could
be increased by the simple increase of its weight;1 in fact, it was proposed
to aim at the desirable result of cheap commodities and " heavy " money
by raising the value of the money issued. The quantity of copper coin
1 It is recorded that in 524 B.C. the emperor was desirous of having "large money''
cast, and was dissuaded from doing so by his council, so currency questions were evi
dently discussed at an early period.

158 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
in circulation remaining the same, of course, the people suffered incon
venience from not having money small enough to serve for trifling trans
actions; but the error of the Government was not more gross, and certainly
more disinterested, than the far more common mistake made in the
opposite direction, by rulers who have expected to enrich themselves,
without impoverishing their subjects, by issuing " light " money at the
nominal price of " heavy." In the " Rites of Chow," one of the recognised
methods of regulating prices is for the State to issue money when prices
are high, and to withdraw from circulation the cash received in payment
of taxes when they are low.1 One of the arguments urged against free
coining2 is based on the inexpediency of surrendering this part of the
supreme power. " Riches are the handle held by the rulers of men," and
to give up the handle is to endanger the rule.
The currency continued to be a source of great embarrassment, and
from time to time the Government was on the point of reverting to the use
of silk and grain as a medium of exchange instead of copper, though a
very short experience showed that it was as easy to tamper fraudulently with
the natural weights of these substances as to manufacture copper money
with an undue proportion of alloy. One of the nameless emperors, whom
history knows only as " the Deposed," in 465 a.d., reverted to the experi
ment of Wen-ti, and allowed the people to cast their own money; the result
was seen in the production of diaphanous tokens, fit, according to the
contemporary phrase, to " float on water or fly in the wind," of which it
took ten thousand to pay for a bushel of rice.3 This license was nomi
nally withdrawn in 494; but there was still no uniformity, and each district
did the best it could for itself, using silk and grain whenever the copper
money was hopelessly depreciated.
The Leang Dynasty issued iron money, which was open to all the same
objections as the copper ; and, for a short time, tin was used in addition
to grain and silk. This dynasty has also the credit of a curious device
for testing the value of the coin in circulation in different districts. It was
proposed to send silk worth two hundred good copper coins for sale in
different parts of the country, which in some places fetched as much as
three hundred coins, " not because the silk was higher valued, but because
the money was debased."* In the Northern Empire at the same time the
salaries of officers were paid alternately in silk or copper, while private
coining was allowed, providing the Government standard of purity was
adhered to.
The short-lived Souy Dynasty set itself seriously to do away with the
multiplicity of coins of every degree of worthlessness. Payment for
1 As the Bank of England raises the rate of discount when money is scarce.
0 W. Vissering, On Chinese Currency, p. 36. This useful essay consists of translations
from Ma-twan-lin's great work, in which the very words of ancient speakers or
memorialists are reproduced for the instruction of posterity. Reviewed by Sir John
Lubbock, Nineteenth Century, Xov. 1879.
3 foum. As. (Aug.), 1837, p. 100. Catalogue of Chinese Coins, p. 425.
* Vi=sering, p. 91.

CHINESE FINANCE. iSg
officers' salaries, taxes, octroi and market duties were accepted in the old
mone}', which, as it came in, was broken up and the metal appropriated
by the administration. Five of the old issues were tolerated, but any
other money found in circulation was confiscated. Unfortunately for the
success of these reasonable measures, the trade of the coiner was always
briskest when the copper coinage was unadulterated ; and it was in vain
that the State prohibited the working of tin and lead mines, which had
hitherto been free, so as to monopolize the illicit as well as the lawful
materials used. Before the fall of the dynasty, things were as bad as ever,
and the people practically used for purposes of exchange any article —
cloth, grain, paper, or metal — -which was in common demand and easily
divisible. The fact that the copper tsien had always been cast, instead of stamped
or hammered, of course made the coiners' work easier ; but this would
not of itself make the work so profitable, as to explain why the offence
continued for ages to be so common, that the Government was again and
again compelled to condone it. In 713 A.D. a million bushels of grain
were issued from the public storehouses and sold to the people, payment
being accepted in the counterfeit coins, which it was desired to call in and
destroy, an end which could not be secured by penal measures.
The explanation of the forgers' persistency is so simple that nothing
but force of habit can have prevented its discovery by Chinese financiers.
The State charged 25 per cent, for manufacture. The copper coinage was
never really adequate to the commercial requirements of the people, so
that private coiners of good money were meeting a real want while
realizing a satisfactory profit to themselves. The trade was therefore not
regarded as essentially discreditable, and to allow private issues of copper
coin was no more considered as a concession to the criminal classes than
the license given to bankers to issue private notes. But the mistaken
habit of charging 25 per cent, on the cost of the metal and labour x clung
to the private mints, and hence free competition did nothing to put down
forgery. The total supply of copper was not materially increased by the abolition
of the Government monopoly, and the comparative scarcity of good money
made the manufacture of bad money always a possible source of profit,
till the competition of private debasers forced other private issuers to
lower their standard of quality. So that an increase of the currency, which
was not excessive in quantity, led to its depreciation, because needlessly
associated with its debasement. It seems simply not to have occurred to
any one that the whole difficulty would disappear, if the State issued at
cost price as much money as was required for circulation, and allowed free
trade in copper for other purposes.
As it did neither, the two mistakes aggravated each other. Copper
was largely in demand for the construction of Buddhist images, and in
creasingly so for the manufacture of various domestic utensils. As the
1 Journ. As., I.e., p. m8.

160 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
copper mines were a Government monopoly, metal for these purposes
could only be obtained by melting down the best of the current coins.
This was illegal, but of course even more impossible to prevent than the
manufacture of base coin, and, being illegal, its results in making good
money scarce were not provided against by fresh issues.
The first decree limiting the amount of copper, lead, or tin, to be
possessed at one time by a single person, was issued in 769 a.d. ; and it
seems to have been aimed merely at the coiners, on the supposition that
no one else would think of hoarding a large stock of such metals. The
small coiners, who carried on their trade in river boats, had a stock worth
at most a few pounds, and it was thought feasible to prevent the storage of
metal in quantities sufficient to make more than ten or twelve taels, or
strings of a thousand tsien. The forger's industry, like all others, was
carried on upon a modest scale, and any larger stock would have been
sufficient for a brisk trade.
The accumulations attacked in the second edict are on a much larger
scale. Whether at the expense of the suffering peasantry or the imperial
treasury, or from the profits of foreign trade, large fortunes had by this
time begun to be amassed by individuals, who, unmindful of the lessons
of Chao-tso, had transmuted them into the most precious metals in reach,
so that there were actually individuals whose hoards of copper money
were worth, according to M. Biot's estimate, something like ^150,000
sterling.1 When the purchasing power of money at this time is con
sidered, the amount seems incredible ; however, only five officers are said
to have had as much as this, and they may have held lucrative govern
ments and taken toll of the taxes. These moneys, we are told, were
intended to be used in buying lands, and the alleged motive of the edict
was to prevent the accumulation of large estates in the hands of a few,
who would turn the cultivators into mere servants or tenants.
No person, of whatsoever class, noble, scholar, merchant, or priest, was
to be allowed henceforward to keep in his own hands more than 5,000
strings of cash, or at the same rate of valuation as before, about ^1,500-
A month's grace was given to put the surplus coin in circulation, while
the officers were condemned offhand to surrender one-fifth of their, pro
bably ill-gotten, gains. Some of the hoards consisted of old metal issues,
since proscribed, and kept by speculators in the hope of their being again
tolerated, and therefore worth more as coin in future than as metal at the
moment. This, of course, tended to defeat the intention of the Govern
ment in calling in these coins ; but the offence is quite different from that
of having too much ready money to invest in land on the one hand, or of
withdrawing too much of the lawful coin of the realm from circulation on
the other.
All the economic ideas of the time, and especially those relating to the
currency, are so much at variance with European usages and principles
that it is difficult to be sure of our ground in any interpretation ; but it
1 Journ. As., I.e., p. 128.

CHINESE FINANCE. t.6]
seems as if the speculators of the period had been addicted to " forestall
ing," or something of the kind, in relation to the copper currency. Money
being scarce, prices were always low ; but for some purposes money was
indispensable, especially when the Government interfered with the popular
attempts at self-defence against the scarcity, by forbidding the use of silk
and grain for exchanges.1 On such occasions one may feel sure that
copper money was not to be bought in small quantities by the people
from the capitalists — who were aggravating the scarcity by locking up their
coin — at a cost at all proportioned to the value of the copper regarded as
a commodity, or even to the price at which it came from the mint.
Ma-twan-lin criticises the measure as ill-judged, on the ground that it
would be better to attack the evil complained of, directly, and forbid the
acquisition of landed properties beyond a certain size. It should be the
object, he assumes, of the Government so to administer the national
wealth as to equalize as far as possible the fortunes of the rich and poor,
but from this point of view he regards the landowner as a more dangerous
enemy than the capitalist. Those who buy land do so in order to keep
it, those who amass money do so in order to profit by circulating it ; and
when commodities are cheap, self-interest alone, he thinks, would suffice
to make the accumulators unlock their money-bags.
Of course we should not expect a contemporary of Chaucer to be an
infallible authority as to the economic problems of the reign of Alfred,
and it seems certain, whether the Sung writer understood the bearing of
the fact or not, that the Tang Emperors felt their own prerogative and
the common weal to be menaced by the accumulation in private hands
of wealth, vast enough to affect the general range of prices by its use or
withdrawal from use. They seem to have suspected the moneyed classes
of conspiring to " bear " the price of land and agricultural commodities,
which was in effect to aim at undermining the national wealth ; and no
measures taken to prevent such a result were likely to be thought
arbitrary in China. The Government, by forcing all the holders of capital
to realize at the same time, certainly obliged them to do so on disadvanta
geous terms, as shown by a passage referring to the legislation of 817 a.d.,
which concludes : " Then the people bought on a large scale farms and
houses to convert their fortune, and precious things fetched a high price ; " 2
a result which must have been satisfactory to the Government, as the
coffers of the accumulators were drained by the high prices they had to
pay. The mutual denunciations of officers and merchants, jealous of each
other's wealth, also helped to make it easier for the Government to
" squeeze " both in succession. At one moment foundries were granted
to princes and high ministers, like the Stuart monopolies, as a sort of
1 By a decree of 734 A.D. , it was forbidden to measure silk by feet and inches, or
grain by spoonfuls or handfuls, as mediums of exchange. This was repealed, and at the
end of the century, stones for grinding rice were received as "money of an intrinsic
value," and exchanged at the rate of one for ten copper cash.
2 Yissering, p. 123.
VOL. 11. — P.C. M

1 62 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
license to grow rich. At another (738) the old experiment of free trade
in coining was revived. The arguments formally adduced on both sides
of the latter question have been preserved, and the balance of opinion
seemed unfavourable to the course. " If you allow private persons to
cast money, the poor will not be rich enough to be able to do it ; and if
the rich families occupy themselves with it, they will steal the more, and
the poor will grow poorer and more overawed by the power of the rich.
Free coining caused princes under the Hans to be as rich as the emperor."
If private coining is allowed and is profitable, other trades will be deserted
for it ; but if the quantity of coin is kept up by the State, there is no such
tempting profit without adulteration. " When commodities are cheap,
this is prejudicial to agriculture, and when the money is base it affects
trade, therefore the duty of a good ruler is to control the relative value of
commodities and the quality of money." x
Many of the phrases used show that the value of the copper coins ran
up simply because there were not as many of them as were required for
use. The quality remained good in the capital, but vast loads of it were
transported, and rich merchants were accused of gradually collecting the
good money to sell it to the false coiners of Kiang-hoai. The Government
could not make up its mind whether to suppress or take part in the
financial speculations of the age. The Government monopoly of copper,
as already observed, had the effect of compelling those who required that
metal, for any other purpose than as money, to melt down the copper
coinage and recast the metal. As the nominal value of the copper money
was 25 per cent, above its cost, this was a serious tax upon the copper
smith's trade ; and as the trade flourished nevertheless,2 while the Govern
ment had to issue fresh coins to make up for what was melted, it occurred
to some inventive Chancellor of the Exchequer that the State itself had
better turn coppersmith, and sell manufactured articles at the advanced
price fixed by its own fancy valuation of the raw material.
It was not proposed to increase the output of copper from the State
mines, but the amount of metal formerly allotted to make coin for a cer
tain district was ordered instead to be delivered at court and worked up
into articles for ordinary use. The profit on this undertaking was so large
that the State was tempted to over-reach itself, and so many provincial
copper foundries were opened that supply began to overtake demand, and
the price of copper fell. Then attempts were made to suppress all private
foundries, and on their failure a still more absurd enactment was passed,
requiring all manufactured articles of copper, however elaborate the
workmanship, to be sold by weight at the same rate as the current coin.
This, of course, could not be carried out, and trade was still further dis
turbed by vexatious checks on the circulation of money between different
provinces, octroi duties being imposed on its exportation.
1 Vissering, p. no.
2 According to the estimate made somewhat later by a provincial functionary, tbe
profit on copper utensils made from cash was 360 per cent.

CHINESE FINANCE. 163
This fresh blunder seems to have led the way to a valuable innovation,
and the first use of a kind of paper money in the shape of treasury bonds.
In 807, ten years before the edict against hoarding coin, the Emperor
Hien-tsong required all merchants to deposit their available specie in the
Imperial treasury in exchange for bonds called fey tsien, or " light money,"
which were payable on demand in the chief towns of the province. The
main object of the Government was, no doubt, to obtain an immediate
supply of cash, though the measure may also have been a first step in the
campaign against moneyed monopolists. But it was really useful as in
creasing the currency to the extent of a moderate issue of bank notes, and
as saving the merchant trouble and expense in transporting large quantities
of the cumbrous medium of exchange.
The gain to the merchants was more obvious than that to the court,
and when the fey tsien were abolished, provincial governors sent in me
morials begging for their continuance, with a special view to prevent
hoarding and low prices. As already described, the hoarding of copper
money was about to be attacked more directly, but fey tsien were issued
again in return for deposits of salt and iron, and they were allowed to
serve as a medium of exchange between the merchants of the capital and
the provinces.
All this time gold and silver were too scarce to count for much in the
financial problems of the time. In 683 a.d. the exportation of grain to
foreign parts had been prohibited, ostensibly because the strange money
received in payment interfered with the ordinary exchanges, but more
probably because the immediate result of such an export trade was to in
crease the treasure hoards of rich traders, and diminish the grain reserves
of the cultivators. In the 9th century gold and silver were put into cir
culation to a limited extent by the Government itself, apparently with the
intention of raising prices, but with the result of lowering them still
further, it is hard to say why, unless copper was withdrawn from circulation
faster than the gold was brought into it. This may well have been the
case as, in 825 a.d., new edicts forbade the melting copper money into
statues of Buddha, under the same penalties as those attached to coming ;
and shortly afterwards, by way of conciliating the obstinate devotees,
they were permitted to make their statues of any metal except copper, such
as gold, silver, lead, or tin.
The following year, 830 a.d. , the regulation of 8 1 7 was renewed in a milder
form. The limit of coin allowed to be hoarded by a single person was
raised to something over ,£2,000, and a respite of a year was granted to
those whose stores reached ^30,000, and two years to those with twice
as much. A curious provision is added, that in transactions involving a
sum of ^30 and upwards, half the price shall be payable in silk, rice, or
other grain ; and this device, if it could have been carried out, would have
ruined the game of those who were speculating for a fall of prices, which
at this rate would have told disadvantageously on their own bargains.
The suppression of the monasteries in the 9th century set so much

1 64 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
copper free that foundries were opened in every district, and money was
again abundant. The supply was thus for a time independent of the
Government mines, and the provincial Governments took advantage of this
circumstance to propose that each province should cast its own money at
discretion, only adhering to the Government standard of size. After this
arrangement was adopted we hear no more of economical questions amid
the wars and tumults which lasted till the close of the dynasty. Notwith
standing the chronic complaints of low prices, the cost of necessaries
seems to have doubled since the Hans.
Agriculture had made no progress, as the area estimated to produce a
year's food for one person is slightly larger than before. The cost of living
had risen to something like a halfpenny a day. A piece of silk was equal in
value to ioo lbs. of cleaned rice ; the size of the pieces is not given,
but then as now it would be the length woven on the loom in common
use, and may have varied little in 1,000 years. The equivalence of these
two values is certain, but the estimate of the price in copper money in
volves a good deal of guess work. M. Biot's calculations would make
both worth about y. 3d., which is intrinsically probable enough. The
estimated consumption of rice is i\ lb. a day for each person, which is
midway between average plenty and dearth according to the standard of
the Chow Li.1
In 763-5 a.d., a writer attempted to calculate the amount of money re
quired for circulation by estimating the annual outlay of the people in rice,
clothes, sacrifices, etc. He estimates the individual's daily consumption of
rice at a little over two quarts, and the other items as each as much again,
so that the general rate of expenditure upon other articles than food, re
garded as necessaries, had risen considerably since the time of the Wei
peasant, whose balance sheet was drawn up under the Hans.
1 Journ. As., I.e., p. 120.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE POSTERIOR DYNASTIES AND THE SUNG.
(907-1280 A.D.)
The period of disturbance intervening between the fall of the Tang and
the foundation of the Sung Dynasty extends over little more than half a
century ; but during this interval, fifteen emperors and five dynasties suc
ceeded each other. They are known as the " posterior dynasties " because
they all reproduce the name of some former ruling house. The Heou or
" after " Leang reigned for sixteen years, and their fall required little further
explanation to posterity than that a favourite musician had been employed
as general. The Heou Tang occupied the throne for fourteen years ; the
dynasty was founded by a son of Li-ke-yong, " the one-eyed dragon," a
Tatar prince who had helped the last but one of the Tang emperors to
suppress a rebellion, and who stands high in the favour of the historians.
He is repeatedly mentioned as a loyal ally who might have saved the Crown
if he had not been distrusted and kept unduly at a distance, on account of
his extraction.
The name of the short-lived dynasty was adopted as a compliment to
their former patrons. The first emperor of the stock was an enthusiast for
the stage, and comedians are mentioned as taking the place of eunuchs in
his favour. They not only enjoyed the license accorded to court fools in
mediaeval Europe, but (924 A.D.) one of them was appointed to an impor
tant governorship, and they and the eunuchs together had influence enough
to discredit any statesman who sought to reduce the expenditure of the
court. Two measures of far-reaching consequences were taken in the middle of
this 10th century ; one was the sub-division of provincial governorships,
which increased the number of officers who could look to the Crown for
profitable employment, while it lessened each governor's power of making
himself dangerously formidable. The Sung Dynasty subsequently reaped
the advantage of this change ; it fell by attacks from without, not from in
ternal disorganization, and its feebleness in resisting the foreign foe could
not seriously be attributed to the decay of feudalism, since the local poten
tates, who flourished at the expense of the empire, had never been famous
for patriotic resistance to alien armies.
The other and more calamitous step was taken when the founder of the
third minor dynasty, the Heou Tsin (936 a.d.), summoned the Khitan
Tatars to his assistance, offering them, in return, a share in the northern
165

1 66 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
provinces of China. He promised a yearly tribute of 300,000 pieces of
silk, and ceded at once sixteen frontier towns, thus throwing all China open
to the Khitan armies. Some of the ceded towns rebelled, thinking it un
worthy of their civilization " to submit to barbarians ; " but parts of Shansi
and Pecheli remained in the Tatars' hands, in addition to the wide region
on the North already held by them. The Khitan Dynasty at this stage
took the name of Leao, by which it is afterwards known, from the province,
Leao-tong, now in its possession ; its capital was subsequently placed at
Peking. The Heou Han, shortest lived of all these short-lived families, was
founded in 947 a.d. by a general of the emperor, who had previously been
taken prisoner by the Khitan Tatars. He fixed his capital at and fortified
Cai-fong-fu in Honan. The third prince of the line was deposed as soon
as proclaimed, by the leader of an army which had gained some victories
in the north. The Heou Chow (951-9) are regarded with less disfavour
by the historians than any of their predecessors, and Chi-tsong (954 a.d.),
last but one of the fifteen " posterior " emperors, may be held to have begun
the work of restoration continued by the founder of the Sung Dynasty.
Under him, we hear of a town changing hands without loss of life or dis
turbance of trade, and he gave his personal name to a very exquisite blue
china, manufactured at Cai-fong-fu — a thing for collectors to dream of in
fond despair.
He was asked to give an order, and commanded that the china for Im
perial use should be henceforward " blue like the sky between the clouds
after rain." His instructions were obeyed, the product being as thin as
paper, lustrous, resonant, highly polished and delicately veined ; colour and
texture were so perfect that in later years, when it had become rare, small
fragments of it were used for ornaments, like precious stones.1 Chi-tsong,
had he lived, might have founded a great dynasty ; as it is, he deserves to
be remembered kindly by all who find delight in that purest, deepest, and
brightest of heaven's blues, which is seen in precious morsels through the
ragged rain-clouds, and which, since his day, no human art has succeeded
in reproducing on the lower earth. The self-consciousness of Chinese
civilization has been noticed already, but it is curious to find that element
mingling in what seems so purely spontaneous an art as Chinese pottery.2
Chi-tsong also recommended himself to the chroniclers by a revival of
the anti-Buddhist edicts. The consent of all the elders of a family was
required before monastic vows could be taken, and all unauthorized
temples were ordered to be destroyed ; yet there still remained 60,000
priests and nuns within the comparatively narrow limits of the imperial
State, and statues of Buddha were as numerous as coin of the realm was
scarce. Chi-tsong's treatment of the religio- financial difficulty is in the
1 La Porcelaine Chinoise, tr. Stanislas Julien, p. 12.
" Writers on art advise artists ... to watch the shadow cast in bright moon
light by a bamboo tree on a white wall." (China, by Robert K. Douglas, p. 194.) The
Chinese artist does not idealize, but by force of sympathetic observation he selects for
reproduction the natural effects that are ideally perfect as they stand.

THE POSTERIOR DYNASTIES AND THE SUNG. 167
best Chinese manner. He explained that he did not wish " to raise doubts
amongst the people by the confiscation of the Buddhas, but," he inquired,
are these copper statues really what is called Buddha ? he had heard that
the virtue of Buddha was to do good to the people, and, in that case,
since it is for their good to have more good copper cash for use, presum
ably Buddha would have wished to have his statues melted !
A contemporary statesman ventured to suggest a doubt as to whether
the scarcity of copper could really be accounted for by the comparatively
small quantity used for tools and Buddhas ; and even went so far as to ask
whether, if it were due instead to the exportation of copper, this must be
looked upon as a calamity or loss, since commodities of some kind, and
presumably of at least equal value, must have been received in exchange
for it. And, though this view does not seem to have commended itself
even to so enlightened a ruler as Chi-tsong, it is interesting as one among
many evidences that the Chinese have not rejected without consideration
the political and economical ideas now prevalent in Europe.
Apart from Tatar encroachments, none of the five dynasties had been
acknowledged in the whole, or even the greater part, of China. The Im
perial Dynasty held indeed the Middle State, as in the degenerate days of
Chow, but it was surrounded by a fluctuating number of minor States,
sometimes as many as twelve, some of which were always intriguing with
the Tatars, while others were at war among themselves.
The founder of the Sung Dynasty, who was known as Tai-tsou (960 a.d.),
had served successfully against the Tatars under Chi-tsong. When the
latter died, leaving only an infant son, what was left of the empire was
threatened by a coalition between the Leao and the northern Hans, who
held Tai-yuen and a territory comprising over forty towns ; and the army
proclaimed their favourite general by force, the people approving, and the
nobles not venturing to oppose. The new Emperor's first thought was how
to put a stop to the incessant revolutions of the last half-century. At the
time of his accession, besides the Khitan empire, seven separate princi
palities divided with him the inheritance of Tang. These were held by
descendants or successful rivals of the governors, who secured hereditary
offices for themselves in the degeneracy of the empire ; and Tai-tsou's first
object was to guard against the growth of similar dangers in the future,
even before reclaiming the severed fiefs.
His first centralizing measure was well adapted to put the people on his
side. He reserved to himself the power of passing capital sentences, and
so gave a right of appeal to the emperor from the judgment of all provin
cial officers ; and in the same year he withdrew from them the command
of provincial troops, and required them to pay all tribute in full to the
Imperial treasury, through which disbursements for local purposes were in
future to be made. Without control of money or troops, the highest
officers became powerless for evil, and their ambition was driven to content
itself with the prizes that a powerful prince could bestow, in return for
loyal and diligent service.

1 68 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
It took eighteen years to subdue all the minor States so as to re-unite
the empire ; the central ones between the Yellow River and the Yang-tse-
kiang fell first with little resistance ; then the second Chow, under whom
Sz'chuen had been independent for forty years ; then the important district
held by the southern Han, with Canton for its capital ; and, finally, the
remainder of the south, while a voluntary cession by the prince of Wu-
yuei added a territory nearly equal to that of the reduced empire taken
over by Tai-tsou in 960 a.d. ; the northern Hans also surrendered voluntarily,
and their officers were retained in the service of the emperor, whose do
mains thus became conterminous on the north with the empire of the Leao.
On the accession of Tai-tsou, under a million families paid tribute to the
empire; but on the accession of his son, Tai-tsong (977 a.d.), the -number
had increased to nearly four millions, not so much by growth of population
or vigilance of the revenue officers, as by the addition of whole provinces
to the Imperial territory. By 982 a.d. it was said that the empire was re
united, as in the days of Han or Tang, with the exception of the ill-fated
cessions made to the Leao. And this was undoubtedly true as regards
China proper, though the influence and authority exercised by the greatest
Tang emperors, beyond the natural boundaries of the country, was never
equalled by the Sung Dynasty, even in its palmiest days.
The last record of three departments added to the empire in 985 a.d. is
interesting, as the proportion between the tribute-paying families and others
is mentioned.1 The district was occupied by 125 different families, to
whom 16,000 other households paid tribute, or rent. The proportion is
doubtless mentioned because it is exceptional, as the same proportion,
throughout the empire, would give an incredibly large population ; but it
is a sufficient reason for doubting whether the population ever declined as
much as the decline in the number of tax-paying householders implies.
The restoration of peace was celebrated by public rejoicings, and the
empire settled down to the enjoyment of internal tranquillity, only broken
by occasional disturbances on the frontier, the significance of which it was
always dangerously easy to ignore. The founder of the dynasty had wished
to establish his capital in the ancient city of Loyang, a naturally strong
position, and nearer to the formidable Tatars on the north-west than either
Cai-fong-fu or Pien-chow. Tai-tsou yielded reluctantly to the persuasions
of the courtiers desirous of returning to the latter, but he is credited with
a prophecy, that before a hundred years had passed, the people would be
exhausted by the large armies necessary to protect the empire, when the
emperor himself did not stand sentinel at the point of danger.
Tchin-tsong, the third emperor of the dynasty, succeeded to the throne
in 997. By this time the Khitan people had become civilized, and con
verted to Chinese manners and modes of government. Like their succes
sors, the Kin and the Mongols, they began to value their Chinese subjects,
who gave no trouble and paid taxes ; and to employ Chinese officers, who
knew how to make the role of emperor easy as well as profitable. The
1 De Mailla, vol. viii. p. 95.

THE POSTERIOR DYNASTIES AND IHE SUNG. 169
boundary between the two empires had never been satisfactorily determined,
as the Chinese had never acquiesced in the cession of territory made by
the Heou Tsin in 937, while the Leao Government demanded the restora
tion of some of the ceded towns which had been retaken. Ultimately
peace was made in 1004, in consideration of an annual payment of silk
and money on the part of China. The Khitan prince was described in
the treaty as the " younger brother " of the emperor, and it was believed
that a little more vigour would have secured better terms, and have saved
the empire from future disaster by driving the Leao back to the Great Wall.
The emperor's timidity and love of peace was held responsible for the
error, and the remainder of his reign was made inglorious by the ascendency
of superstitious impostors and other unworthy favourites.
In 1023 the reign of Gin-tsong begins with a regency, which Ma-twan-
lin regards as the most brilliant period of the whole dynasty. The Empress
mother's first measure was to appoint a commission, with a view to a
general reduction of taxes, and meanwhile the duties on tea and salt were
remitted. The Leao were occupied by wars with their own still barbarous
neighbours, so that the people reaped all the benefit of internal good
government. The census of 1029 a.d. for the first time records a number
of tax-paying families slightly in excess of the highest figure reached in
the middle of the 8th century.1 The Empress died in 1033, shortly after
emulating the audacity of Wu-heou by herself performing the imperial
sacrifice. Few emperors in the history are commended in equally un
qualified terms of eulogy; but the will by which she endeavoured to
prolong the regency was set aside, as her son, Gin-tsong, was already
twenty-three, and capable of governing himself. It is, however, a curious
illustration of the clannish tendency of the Chinese, that the ladies of the
harem should be found ready to unite in quasi-political alliances, like the
literati and the eunuchs. The empress regent appointed as empress
mother, in her stead, the first of the inferior wives of the late emperor,
so far as appears, purely out of regard to her character and ability, and,
though not allowed to continue the regency, this lady was actually installed
as the lawful object of the young emperor's filial piety.
Throughout the first century of the Sung Dynasty, the legitimate influence
of the women of the imperial house seems to have stood high. A daughter
of Tai-tsong, who was married to a subject and died in 1062 a.d., is com
memorated at length by the historians, who not only praise her private
virtues, and her knowledge of history, but also mention that she was fre
quently consulted by the empress regent on public affairs.
In the year 1042 a.d. there was some threatening of ;a Khitan war, but
the danger was avoided by diplomacy, the Chinese envoy pointing out to
the Leao emperor that his interest in the matter was not identical with
that of the turbulent nobles who clamoured for a fray, in which they might
get booty, but their sovereign little or no advantage. The precise nuances
of respect, to be evidenced by the terms in which the high contracting
1 Mlm. sur la pop. de la Chine. Journ. As., 1836, p. 461.

1 70 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
parties speak of each other, were keenly debated, and again the Chinese
emperor was accused of waiving just claims in the interest of peace. More
innocently, if not in the long run more fortunately, he also aimed at culti
vating friendly relations with the most formidable rival of the Khitan, the
new king of Hia and the Nutchin Tatars, subsequently known as the
Kin. The former of these wished to have permission, secured by treaty,
for free intercourse between his subjects and the Chinese, in his and their
territories. Former treaties had only stipulated for the surrender of
fugitives from the jurisdiction of their lawful prince ; and the new
demand shows how great, in spite of border wars, had been the develop
ment of peaceful intercourse in the outer kingdoms of greater China,
where different ruling houses were virtually being educated by an allied
population. The power of the Khitan was held to have reached its height
in the middle of this (nth) century, when its sway extended from the
desert to the sea, over a territory 10,000 li in extent ; and the pacific Sung
princes were never safer than when this empire had ceased to be aggres
sive, while continuing strong enough to act as a barrier against the wilder
tribes beyond.
After a prosperous reign of forty years, including the regency, the mild
and frugal emperor was succeeded (1063) by Yng-tsong, well meaning, but
of feeble health, who died in 1067 a.d. The century of prosperity con
templated in Tai-tsou's prophecy was now completed, and the reign of
Chin-tsong (1067-1085) certainly marks a turning point in the fortunes of
the dynasty. This is the period memorable for the legislation of Wang-
ngan-shi, the " Innovator," and to the maleficent influence of this great
political heresiarch the orthodox historians trace all the future woes of
China. His laws are almost exclusively economic, so the account of them may
be postponed till we have finished a short account of the decline of the
united empire, and the subsequent prosperity and decay of the Southern
Sung. But apart from the odiwn theologicum which has gathered round
the Innovator's memory, his policy, however erroneous, can scarcely be
held responsible for the gradual gathering and breaking of two more waves
of Tatar conquest, each of which swept, as it were, further than the last
over the peaceful shore, because of the breaches on the coast-line made
by those that went before it.
China has never been a fighting empire, and her virtual protectorate
over Central Asia in the 7th and 8th centuries a.d. was due rather to the
absence of any formidable Tatar power on the north or west than to her
own military ambition or success. The Sung emperors only fought on the
defensive, and invited attack by their too obvious desire for peace at almost
any price. They had their reward in one way, for the internal prosperity
and material wealth of China reached a point under their rule as yet un
dreamt of. The populous provinces and magnificent cities, described with
so much enthusiasm by Marco Polo, were preserved, but not created, by
the wisdom of the great Khan ; the Mongols only entered into the inheri-

THE POSTERIOR DYNASTIES AND THE SUNG. 171
tance of the Sung, and, as the centre of the empire was forced further
and further south, peace and wealth went with it, so that Chinese civiliza
tion continued to secure fresh conquests, as the Chinese empire lost hold
of its earliest settlements.
The population continued to increase, not fast but steadily, and the
census of 1084 gives 17,211,713 families paying tribute, which, compared
with 9,955,729 in 1014,1 and the first census of the reunited empire, shows
the population, or at least the taxpaying part of it, to have doubled in
about each half-century. Chin-tsong, whose life between the irate literati
and his autocratic premier was by no means an easy one, found peace in
the grave at the comparatively early age of 38, after a reign of eighteen
years. Tche-tsong, a younger son by an inferior wife, was appointed heir, the
dowager empress, who was childless, again taking the regency, and install
ing the inferior wife as empress mother. All the orthodox scholars and
statesmen who had gone into forced or voluntary exile on account of their
hostility to Wang-ngan-shi, were now recalled, the obnoxious regulations
rescinded ; and the difficulty of the whole problem further illustrated by the
discovery that Wang was not so entirely without supporters as had been
imagined, since the repeal of his enactments produced a new class of mal
contents. The regent died in 1093, and the young Emperor was persuaded
to take the reins of government into his own hands. By appeals to his
filial piety, and perhaps to his boyish jealousy of the authority of the late
dowager, he was prevailed on to abandon her policy and revert to that of
his father, as expounded by the surviving adherents of the Innovator.
The candour of the historians shows itself in their record of the successes
against the Hia and the Tibetans, which illustrated the short reign of this
rather feeble prince, notwithstanding the judgments of heaven merited
by his sweeping proscription of the families and the writings of the old
opponents of Wang. He died 1100 a.d., without having nominated a
successor or left a son ; there was, however, no constitutional disturbance,
for the empress, in the exercise of her undoubted right and duty, selected
the one of the surviving sons of Chin-tsong, whom she considered best
qualified to govern, and her choice was approved and accepted by the
chief ministers.
The first census in the reign of Hoei-tsong, two years after his accession
(1102), gives the population of the empire at the highest figure yet
reached ; more than 20 millions of families are recorded as paying taxes,
and the estimate of 100 millions for the total population must be under
rather than over the mark, as the estimate of five persons to a family is
certainly not excessive, while scholars, soldiers, civil officers, slaves, and
priests are omitted from the record ; and these classes with their families
would add some millions to the general total. After the death of the
dowager empress, the early promises of the reign were not kept, and Hoei-
tsong was accused of giving his attention to trifles,— employing thousands
1 Journ. As., I.e., p. 46 1.

172 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
of workmen upon the production of curiosities in bone, ivory, rhinoceros
horn, gold, silver, precious stones, and bamboo ; as well as of unduly
favouring the Taoists and the adherents of the Innovator. Still, the first
ten years of the reign and the century passed without calamity, and when
hostilities began between the Nutchin or the Kin and the Leao, the first
idea of the Chinese Government was to profit by them to recover Peking,
and the other Chinese towns held by the Khitan emperor.
The Nutchin or Nutche were a people of vvhich mention had been made
from time to time since the 5th century. They had broken up into
branches that were distinguished as the civilized and the barbarous
Nutchin, and while some had invaded Corea, and others formed indepen
dent settlements in the north, some had settled under the Leao govern
ment. Intermittent action as auxiliaries of the Leao served to train and
discipline the latter into a formidable army. In 11 14 a.d., Akouta, the
founder of the Kin empire, openly declared war, and rapidly defeated the
Leao armies, claiming to be recognised as a feudal superior instead of a
tributary. When negotiations for peace had begun, emissaries of the
Chinese encouraged the Kin to proceed with the war, and in n 20 a treaty
was concluded between "the great emperor of the Sung" and "the great
emperor of the Kin," by which the assistance of Chinese troops was pro
mised against the Leao, in consideration of a rectification of the frontier.
The Kin, however, had no intention of serving as a catspaw ; the
territory which the Chinese were to reconquer for themselves was the last
to be attacked, and when it served as a refuge for the armies the Kin had
defeated elsewhere, Akouta not only rejected the Chinese demand for
further cessions, but also repudiated the obligations of the recent treaty.
In 1 122 the Kin took Peking for themselves, but ceded part of the dis
puted territory to China, in return for a subsidy. Meanwhile, the Leao
prince was a fugitive, driven to take refuge with his old enemy, the Hia
king. Yeliu-tache, his chief minister and adviser, after trying in vain to
save the empire for another prince of the same stock, and having his
counsels rejected, rode off with 200 horsemen, and soon rallied round him
a new fighting nation, composed of all the scattered families and tribes
who, for one reason or another, were dissatisfied with the recent revolution,
and unwilling to submit to the empire of the Kin.
The curious thing is that this Yeliu-tache, who founded the empire of
the Kara Khitan (1124-1201), and took so readily to the kingship of the
steppes, was himself a doctor of the Chinese Han-lin College, and before
the peaceful progress of the Leao empire was interrupted, had been active
in promoting the study of letters, and the elaboration of domestic adminis
tration, after the most approved Chinese models. Holding aloof from
immediate conflict with the Kin, he made alliance with the Uigours, and
extended his power towards the west as far as Samarcand and Bokhara.
But for his death, in n 36, he might have arrested the conquests of the
Kin, and perhaps have forestalled the Mongols in bringing all China under
the rule of an intelligent foreign dynasty. It makes, however, little differ-

THE POSTERIOR DYNASTIES AND THE SUNG. 173
ence to China, from which wild horde her conquerors trace their pedigree.
The saying applied to the people of a great European empire, that if you
scratch a Russian the Tatar shows through, would have to be reversed in
Asia ; for if you polish a Tatar, of whatsoever variety, he emerges a China
man, whether he may have any ethnological right to assimilate the same
varnish or no.1
Meanwhile the ease with which the Kin had disposed of the most
formidable enemy of China was not adapted to inspire them with much
respect for the armies these enemies had always been able to defeat.
Pretentions too exorbitant to be accepted, even by a frightened court,
were put forward, and the Chinese capital itself was threatened with
attack. Hoei-tsong wished to take flight, and when dissuaded from such a
premature surrender, he abdicated (1125 a.d.) in favour of the heir to the
throne, as Hiouen-tsong of the Tang Dynasty had done in 756, when the
empire seemed to be in a similar strait. At the first show of resistance
the Kin army retreated, but Kin-tsong had been seized by panic as soon
as he heard the enemy had crossed the Yellow River. His ambassador
showed equal cowardice; and finally in 1126, by a disgraceful treaty, the
Sung emperor agreed to cede, not only the districts already held by the
Leao, but three other departments as well, to address his conqueror as
his superior or " elder brother," and to give up all Chinese natives of the
ceded provinces who took refuge in his States, as well as to pay an
immense contribution in gold, silver, cattle, and silk.
The defeat of the Leao armies gave the Kin unquestioned command
of the peaceful districts which had once been Chinese, and of those
which had virtually become so by the contagious example of Chinese
industry and civilization. Thus all that the Leao had held required no
further conquering ; there was no natural barrier between the lands thus
held and the Chinese provinces north of the Hoang-ho, and the ancient
fortifications of the towns had been destroyed by Tai-tsou. Virtually no
resistance therefore was offered, so it is little wonder that the demands of
the invaders grew. The treasury was empty, and to raise even a part of
the promised ransom, money had to be borrowed from private citizens ;
hostilities never came fairly to an end on either side, though the Tatar
troops went homewards for the hot months. The emperor spent the
breathing space allowed him in abolishing all the regulations of Wang-
nganshi, whose portrait he ordered to be removed from the temple of
Confucius. But though the innovator may have truckled to the Leao, he
had not invented the Kin ; and the military weakness and disorganization
of the empire was not to be remedied by the abolition of rules which in
any case were incompatible with a state of war.
1 The political philosophy of the Uigour poem, Kudatku Bilik (translated by A.
Vambery), has much in common with that of China. Besides much gnomic praise of
"Wisdom " the ruler is admonished to seek fame by favouring traders, and letting a
good profit fall to the share of the merchant, by speaking the common people fair and
giving them to eat and drink ; and since "the cultivators are necessary people, he is
bidden to "associate with them."

174 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
Despairing of open resistance, the Chinese court tried to tamper with
Khitan officers who had taken service with the Kin, but this expedient
proved of- no avail. Cai-fong-fu was again invested, and by a confused
sort of capitulation, in which there was more abject cowardice than
treachery, Kin-tsong and his father, the late emperor, were carried off
prisoners into Tartary, with all the royal family except a brother, who still
kept the field, and an empress, who had been (improperly) repudiated,
and now summoned the brother, Kao-tsong, to rescue the inheritance of
his race. He was proclaimed in 1127, and, while he took refuge nearer the
coast, at least two generals in succession redeemed the credit of China,
and, but for internal rebellions and intrigues, might even yet have
driven back the Tatars.
One of them died repeating, " It is time to cross the Hoang-ho, cross
the Hoang-ho," meaning that the campaign should be fought out on the
north of that river. The emperor, however, continued his flight to the
south, and was followed by the Kin army even beyond the Kiang. The
other, a young officer named Yo-fei, a born general as well as an ac
complished scholar,1 after twelve years of gallant and successful fighting,
was assassinated in prison, by a rival, who regarded him as the only
insuperable obstacle to the conclusion of a peace, even more injurious
than the last. The incessant fighting in the central provinces had by
this time exhausted the Kin, who in 11 35 also found themselves menaced
by a peculiarly ferocious horde of barbarians from the North. These were
the Mongols, among whose awe-inspiring qualities was mentioned their
power of "seeing by night as well as by day." In 1141, the year of Yo-
fei's murder, peace was signed, the Hwai fixed as the boundary between the
two empires, and little more than the southern half of China left to the
Sung emperor, who even submitted in this treaty to be designated as a
subject of the Kin.
The reign of Oukimai, the second Kin emperor (1124-1136 a.d.), marks
the beginning of settled and civilized life among the conquerors. History
credits him, like Yeliu-tache, with all the virtues the Chinese value in the
founder of a dynasty, including that of employing and taking the advice of
virtuous subjects. Like the later Mantchus, the Kin required their
Chinese subjects, under penalty of death, to shave their heads and wear
Tatar dress ; and the amalgamation of the two peoples was further pro
moted by the settlement of agricultural colonies, bound to render military
service when called upon, in those central provinces which were furthest
from the seat of the Northern government. In 1151, a great college was
founded after the Chinese fashion ; but the Kin emperors, by that time, had
ceased to be formidable by their virtues.
Peace had left the Sung empire just as it was before, except in size ;
and the court, to which the existence of its distant provinces was known
only by an act of faith, was content and free from any craving for a re
vanche. And in the next decade the two empires are described as living
1 Giles, Gems, p. 212.

THE POSTERIOR DYNASTIES AND THE SUNG. 175
on amicable terms, while profound peace reigned on either side of the
border, as a symptom of which we find that in 11 76 the history of the
eastern Hans was translated into Nutche for Oulo, one of the ablest and
most humane of the Kin emperors.
Oulo died in 1189, regretted by his subjects as a modern Yao or Shun ;
and in the same year, on the death of the emperor Kao-tsong, the reigning
prince also abdicated in favour of his son, Kwang-tsong, one of the most
unfortunate rulers of a dynasty in which good intentions were more
common than good luck. He also abdicated after a short reign in n 94.
The thirty years' peace proved more advantageous to the Chinese than
to the Kin ; the population of the Southern empire again showed a ten
dency to increase, and in the latter half of the 12th century the number of
families paying tribute in the divided empire was scarcely, if at all, inferior
to the number registered in all China a century before.
The Kin, on the other hand, had lost some of their skill and more of
their liking for war. The troops on the frontier murmured at their hard
ships, and the people at the taxes imposed to provide for the extravagance
of Oulo's successors. The Chinese thought to profit by the embarrass
ments of the Kin, as they had formerly hoped to use the Kin against the
Leao, but they also had domestic traitors, and in 1206 the Tatars were
introduced into Sz'chuen by an officer who hoped by their alliance to
revive, for his own benefit, the separate principality of Chou. Thus the
confines of the empire began to narrow in from the west as well as the
north ; and while the first half of Ning-tsong's reign was not unprosperous,
the last fifteen years of it belong to the decline and fall of the Southern
empire. As late as 12 n the Kin claimed Genghis Khan as a tributary, and on
his assuming the style of emperor (1206), they feared lest their old masters
the Leao should unite with him. In 12 14, the Kin prince proposed to fix
his capital at Cai-fong-fu, to be out of reach of the Mongols, exactly as
the Sung emperors had done to be further from the Khitan. In 1217 A.D.,
Ning-tsong ventured to refuse the accustomed tribute to the Kin, and the
omission was not resented. Two years later the Mongols reduced Corea
on the east and the kingdom of the Kara Khita on the west ; and Genghis
Khan began to indulge in visions of universal empire while exchanging
friendly embassies with the Chinese.
In 1229, Genghis was succeeded by Ogatai, whose faithful minister
Yeliu-tchoutsai, a scholar descended from the royal family of the old Leao
Dynasty, urged him at once to adopt civilized methods of ruling his
present empire and future conquests. The primitive custom of the
Mongols was to slaughter and destroy all that came in their way ; but
Chinese officers in Mongol service had already prevailed on the generals
to forbid this savage custom, which gave the courage of despair to the
invaded people. Henceforward, instead of levelling towns, massacring
their inhabitants, and turning the cultivated fields into pasture for their
herds and horses, the Mongols were instructed to spare their new sub-

176 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
jects, whose labour could be made worth far more to their lords than so
much grazing land.
The same virtuous minister warned his master against accepting presents
from officers, which they could only make at the expense of those they
governed. Much to the disgust of the Mongol chiefs, he employed two
Chinese subjects of the Sung as assistant administrators, and one gets a
quaint glimpse of the bearing of these haughty savages, in the midst of
the civil organization of China, from a regulation (1237 a.d.) forbidding
the Mongol nobles to post as heretofore free of charge along the public
roads. At the same time the functions of different officers were dis
tinguished and order established in the procedure by the introduction of
seals and other symbols of administrative regularity. Hitherto, no doubt,
Northern China had suffered more than the Sung empire; but Yeliu-
tchoutsai wisely aimed at making it evident to the Chinese subjects of
the Kin that they had nothing to lose by a change of masters. In 1232,
Ogatai required the Kin emperor to send him among other hostages a
Han-lin doctor of the house of Confucius (together with skilled em-
broideresses and falconers), and by his minister's advice, he received
the great man's descendant with due honour and confirmed his title ol
Count. In 1233, the Mongols besieged Cai-fong-fu; and after all the slaughter
of the siege, 1,400,000 families were said to be left to profit by the
clemency of the conqueror. In the next year the Kin emperor abdicated
in favour of a younger and more active prince, as Hoei-tsong had vainly
done little more than a century before, in almost identical circumstances.
In the South the long and unfortunate reign of Li-tsong began in 1224;
he was descended, in the tenth generation, from the founder of the house.
The Chinese at first hoped to reconquer some of the Kin provinces in
Central China before the Mongols had laid hands on them ; but this
aggression was resented, and, though they solicited peace in 1235,
hostilities continued practically without intermission from that time, in
the debateable ground between the Hwai and the Hoang-ho.
The education of the Mongols went on apace, and in 1237 examinations
were held under their auspices, at which slaves, i.e. Chinese prisoners ot
war, were expressly authorized to compete, whether their owners gave
consent or not. Northern China hitherto had been lightly taxed, but in
1239 a Mahomedan offered to farm the revenues for 2,200,000 taels, just
twice as much as had been exacted hitherto. Yeliu-tchoutsai protested,
" That is how the people are made discontented ; " but Ogatai could not
resist the temptation of the increased revenue, and the offer was accepted.
Misery and brigandage were said to follow. The virtuous Tatar minister,
whose chance of immortality would be greater if he had been blessed with
a more pronounceable name, died in 1243, leaving no wealth, after a long
life of power, which he had used equally for the advantage of the Mon
gols, his own people, and the Chinese.
One of the earliest traits recorded of his career is his collecting two

THE POSTERIOR DYNASTIES AND THE SUNG. 177
horseloads of rhubarb for the use of the sick soldiers in his army ; and
the argument by which he tried (unsuccessfully) to dissuade Ogatai
from drinking himself to death, is worthy of a modern temperance
lecturer. He called the emperor's attention to the corrosion of the
iron pot used to heat his wine, and assured him that the action of the
liquid on the human stomach must be still more destructive than on the
iron. We are now nearing comparatively familiar ground, and shall be able to
take for granted the leading historical events, which it has hitherto been
necessary to describe in brief before they could serve as landmarks in the
story, so far as we have been able to trace it, of the economical develop
ment of China. In 1251, Kubla was appointed generalissimo of the
Mongol armies by his brother, the fourth, emperor of the dynasty. Yao-
chou, a Chinese scholar, who had been his teacher, was summoned to act
as his adviser, and on him the mantle of Yeliu-tchoutsai seems to have
fallen. The two in concert established a tribunal at Cai-fong-fu to restore
agriculture and settle wandering labourers upon the land.
Kubla's rule was gentle, and carefully in accordance with Chinese laws,
and his consequent popularity excited the jealousy of the Khan, who,
however, was satisfied by a personal interview, of his brother's loyalty. In
1253, Kubla captured Tali in Yunnan, where his envoys had been
murdered, but forbade all slaughter in imitation of the founder of the Sung
Dynasty. In 1259, he crossed the Kiang, which the Southern court had
been accustomed to regard as an impassable natural defence; but when the
Chinese begged for peace, he was not unwilling to grant their prayer, so as
to secure time for organizing his own administration, the rather as his
presence was urgently required in Tatary to put down intrigues against
his succession to the Mongol empire.
Li-tsong's long and inglorious reign came to an end in 1265 ; his suc
cessor, Tou-tsong, was a lover of wine and women, whose debaucheries
were not forgotten when Marco Polo visited the lost capital of his race. He
died young after a reign of nine years, leaving the crown to his son, Kong-
tsong, an infant of four. Sz'chuen was already in the hands of the Mongols,
and in 1275, when the final campaign was begun in earnest, the only
refuge for the court was supposed to be near the sea-coast, in reach of
ships for Fo-kien. Marco Polo, who reached the court of Kubla in the
same year, has described the conquest of his great general Peyen, a
foreigner of the Si-yu or countries of the West. An appeal for mercy to
the infant emperor was politely met by the reminder that the founder of
the Sung Dynasty himself superseded the infant son of his late lord Chi-
tsong. Canton was taken in 1277, and the boy emperor died the next year.
Lou-siou-fou, one of the few faithful adherents of the losing cause, insisted
on proclaiming another son of Tou-tsong and taking refuge in the fleet.
But the Mongols were victorious by sea as well as land ; death or capture
was the only choice, and the house of Sung ended, not without dignity, as
vol. 11. — p.c. N

178 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
the loyal Lou-siou-fou, after throwing his own wife and children into the
sea, leapt after them, and sank with the child emperor in his arms. The
Mongol Dynasty, known as the Yuen, is reckoned to begin in 1280, the
twentieth year of Kubla's reign in Northern China.

CHAPTER XV.
AGRARIAN ECONOMY AND THE INNOVATOR'S LA WS.
The mere political chronicle of reigns and wars and treaties is far from
explaining why the 320 years of Sung rule are counted among the glorious
and prosperous periods of Chinese history. Even before the Tatar con
quests had begun, China was less active and influential in the rest of Asia
than she had been under the Hans and the Tang. And the glories of the
Augustan age of Chinese literature do not seem to be tarnished in the
eyes of those who, after all, are better judges than ourselves, even by the
political and military incapacity which allowed the literary empire to
become a prey to barbarian conquest.
It is said that Kubla, on his accession to the Northern throne, inquired
if it was true, as people said, that the Buddhists had ruined the Leao and
the literati the Kin. The Chinese scholar addressed declared himself
unable to answer for the Leao ; but as regarded the Kin, since they only
employed one or two literati at most, it was not possible that this could
be the cause of their fall. The military and the laity doubtless applied the
remark which had reached Kubla's ears about the Kin with even more
force to the Sung themselves. But it was rather the disunion than the
supremacy of the learned that exercised a baleful influence on the history
of China at this period ; and as the idle controversies on doctrinal minutiae
ceased on the approach of real calamity, the conquered nation had all its
energies free for the easy task of subjugating its invaders.
The precedents of antiquity make it impossible for educated Chinese
statesmen to associate, with the life of any one dynasty, the preservation of
those articles of their political creed which are really regarded as essential
to national salvation. The person of the Emperor counted for very little
in the sacredness of his office ; the office remained, as the rules of good
government remained, but any de facto emperor who adhered to the rules
became invested with its sacredness. The literati of the North, in giving
their allegiance to a ruler like Ogatai, with a minister like Yeliu-tchoutsai,
and those of the South, in submitting to Kubla, were not either in imagina
tion or in fact betraying their country to the foreigner ; they were only
recognising, to borrow the French phrase, one Chinaman the more, in the
Mongol who was prepared to conform to their ideal of a constitutional
emperor. What we are apt to regard as the tragic dismemberment of the empire,
in 1 1 25, was in the same way a matter of less regret than the wars by which

i8o OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
it was attended. After peace was concluded, the North was not pining for
reunion nor the South for reconquest. China had been divided before into
a Northern and a Southern empire, with a Tatar Dynasty reigning in the
North ; and both halves were richer, more prosperous, and more peaceful
in the 12th than in the 5th century. It may even be doubted whether
any one but the historiographers clearly realized what had happened to the
empire ; for incidentally, in the course of a financial discussion reported by
Ma-twan-lin, we find that the foundation of the dynasty of the Southern
Sung is regarded as a victorious event— a legend which might easily find
acceptance in the southern provinces, since these profited materially by
becoming the seat of empire.
If we bear in mind that in China the fall of a dynasty does not necessarily
entail the fall, even, of a strong party in the nation, we shall be able to
estimate the causes to which the fall of this dynasty is attributed, without
exaggerating their influence on the national development. The three
main causes, according to the historians, are the victorious incursion of
the Khitan, the Kin, and the Mongols, the so-called reforms of Wang-ngan-
shi, and the abuse of paper money.
The discussions of the learned mostly derived their origin and their
bitterness from the controversies which raged as fiercely about the Inno
vator's commentaries on the Classics as about his new laws, so that this
unwonted element of disorder hardly needs to be separately considered.
None of these influences affect the first century after the accession of
Tai-tsou, which was held to include the most brilliant part of the dynasty ;
so that the economic history of the Sung divides itself into two portions,
that before and after Wang-ngan-shi, almost as the history of the Hans is
cut in two by the reign of the usurper Wang-Mang.
Immediately after the accession of Chin-tsong, in 1067, he began to
inquire for Wang-ngan-shi, but was dissuaded from summoning him to
court. This fateful person is first mentioned in De Mailla's history as
joining with Ssema-kwang and other meritorious statesmen in urging Gin-
tsong to appoint an heir. This was in 1061 ; subsequently he is spoken of
more than once in praise and blame before he appears on the scene him
self, as if almost unconsciously the historian had felt obliged to take an
unwontedly dramatic, not to say tragic, tone to prepare his readers for the
coming tale. To us the Innovator certainly remains an enigmatical per
sonage ; too much of a rationalist for the orthodox Confucians, he was
accused of favouring the superstitions of Buddhism ; while professing to
restore the ancient rites of Chow, he is branded in the eyes of posterity
with the name of Innovator and it is only from the study of his measures
themselves, apart from the criticism passed on them, that we can hope to
judge whether the tendency of his policy was really anti-popular or only
gave dissatisfaction to some influential, disproportionately vocal members
of the body politic. European critics from the Abbe" Grosier to M Biot
have been inclined to regard Wang-ngan-shi as an unappreciated great man,
a reformer sacrificed to the narrow and prejudiced conservatism of the

THE INNOVATOR'S LAWS. 181
literati, and it is certainly true that his economical ideas are in some
respects more European than Chinese ; on the other hand, a consensus of
opinion among the leading statesmen and writers of a generation rich in
disinterested and capable public servants, who are also brilliant historians,
essayists, and poets, may well give us pause unless we simplify matters by
ignoring— as, thanks to the apathy of translators, we easily may — all Chinese
literature and philosophy after Mencius.
The current opinion respecting Wang-ngan-shi before his elevation
seems to have been that he was an accomplished but erratic scholar ;
without practical experience in affairs, but strongly attached to his own
views ; able, but not sincere — a word which covers a wide ground in
Chinese ethics. When the emperor recurred to his name, he was told that
such a man might be useful in the Han-lin College, but should not be
entrusted with affairs of State. In 1068 he was summoned to court and
allowed to address memorials to the emperor, though not placed in office.
When the emperor in conversation proposed to himself, as a model for
imitation, the second emperor of the Tang Dynasty, the great Tai-tsong,
Wang advised him rather severely to content himself with imitating Yao
and Shun. Yet in 1069, when the emperor very orthodoxly reduced his
luxuries and expenditure apropos of earthquakes and dry seasons which
had terrified the people, Wang rebuked him for the superstition, arguing
that the course of nature is necessary and the causes of natural phenomena
independent of, and indifferent to, the merit of mankind.
The orthodox Premier was scandalized at this dangerous doctrine ;
in his rejoinder he does not enter into the question as a matter of scientific
reasoning, it is a political and a moral necessity that ruler and subject
should stand in awe of the judgment of Heaven, of which these national
visitations have from all time been regarded as a symbol. Only a bad
man could wish to undermine this salutary feeling, and the wicked Wang
who dares to whisper such heresy in his Sovereign's ears is obviously
regarded by his contemporaries much as " the Atheist " Hobbes was by
contemporary opponents of his theological and political doctrines.
Next year (1069), in spite of the remonstrances of other ministers, he
was added to their number, and he scored a dialectical victory over his
opponents, who said he was competent to give interpretation of the
Classics but not to advise in practical affairs, by pointing out that, as the
Classics give rules for the conduct of affairs, to know the Classics well must
be to know the best rules for the proper conduct of affairs — which could
not orthodoxly be denied. He at once announced as his programme "To
change existing customs and lay down rules for good conduct," which
must have seemed at least as inconsistent as the criticism just refuted of
his opponents.
The key-note to Wang's financial policy was the belief that it was
possible to do without taxation ; or rather that the expenses of the State
might be defrayed, in lieu of taxation, by the profits realized on certain
commercial operations, which he wished the State to undertake on its own

1 82 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
account. He was in favour of substituting fixed money payments for
contributions in kind or labour, and did not trouble himself to inquire
how far the economical gain to the treasury, from such a change, might
be counterbalanced by the losses of individual tax-payers. The first
innovation propounded was to abandon the old practice, by which the
provinces sent their contributions or taxes in kind to the capital, where
they were sold for the benefit of the State.
Wang argued, with some plausibility, that the value of these contribu
tions varied from year to year, and he proposed to substitute a fixed pay
ment, the produce of which was to be spent by the officials in buying the
goods required by the State in the cheapest market. It is obvious, how
ever, that the cultivators under this scheme would lose at least as much
as the State gained, by the substitution of a fixed payment in money for
a variable quantity of agricultural produce. The primitive Chinese custom
made the State go shares with the peasant in his losses as well as his gains.
Mencius has preserved for us an early statement of the argument in favour
of this partnership, and so far, at all events, it is clear that the literati who
opposed the new scheme represented the interest and the wishes of the
people. To carry out the proposed measure a special transport commission was
demanded, with a capital of five millions cash and three million piculs of
rice, to pay for the first purchases and the staff expenses. The scheme
was negatived as too costly, and we have an account of the arguments
used against it by Su-che, a brother of Su-tung^p'o, and one of the most
interesting personages of the age. He objected, not only to the extrava
gant cost of the proposed staff, but also to the opportunities for fraud
offered by the scheme. Members of the commission were sure not to
trade fairly, but would favour their friends for bribes ; all this would be so
much dead loss to the State, and if any trifling profit remained after all, it
would not make up for the falling off in the ordinary taxes levied on private
traders, whose business had been taken out of their hands by the State.
Another unpopular measure, called the "Forced Labour Emancipation
Act," had the same tendency as the last project, and was actually put into
effect. The corvee, it is admitted, is not an economical or very efficient
instrument for getting work done, and it is not improbable that the State
at this time received much less than the traditional value of the labour
tax ; on the other hand, the increase of population and the development
of private industry must have very much reduced the proportion of labour
required on the public service. A mere proposal to compound for the
labour tax would therefore not have been untimely, and possibly not
unpopular, if it had not been accompanied by the attempt to restore the
amount of the tax to its traditional nominal value before effecting the
composition. The sum required being comparatively large, i.e. the value
of the days' work which theoretically should be — instead of those which
actually had been — given, the payment in money instead of kind was
found onerous.

THE INNOVATOR'S LAWS. 183
According to Ssema-kwang, the peasants had no money; they obtained
grain by ploughing, and cloth by growing cotton and mulberries, and if
they had to pay a uniform money tax in bad seasons they would have
to root up their mulberry trees for firewood, kill their buffaloes, and sell
their land to meet the demands of the tax-gatherer. On the other hand,
we are led to infer that the poor would also lose the benefit of the wages
paid them by the rich who hired substitutes to do their share of the
work. Sinking funds were as unknown as public debts, but one cannot help
feeling that Wang's genius was thrown away upon a financial situation of
such primitive simplicity, when we read of his device for insuring the State
against any possibility of loss from the Labour Emancipation law. Besides
compounding for the corvee, a supplementary tax was imposed to form
an insurance fund against the losses in bad years, when even the Innovator
admitted that it would be impossible to extort the " Labour Emancipation
aid money."
The reference already made to the hiring of substitutes shows that the
labour tax was not, like the land tax, habitually evaded by those best able
to pay it, and the commutation scheme was made additionally unpopular
by being associated with the abolition of the exemptions previously allowed,
in favour of families in which there was only one able-bodied man, or
those consisting of women and children exclusively. Upon the financial
failure of this labour tax, a general property tax was imposed on all
classes. The most important and the most vigorously criticised of the new laws
was, however, the third, known as the " Green Sprout Law." The proposal
was that the State should lend grain out at 4 per cent, to the farmers,
either for sowing fresh lands for the benefit of the State, or to carry them
over bad seasons. The seed was to be advanced from the public granaries
in the spring, and repayment made, of principal and interest, in the
autumn. The scheme was founded partly upon the benevolent provisions
of the Chow Li, which allowed advances free of interest to the poor, and
partly on a temporary expedient recently tried by the Board of War,
which, in order to provide food in situ for the frontier troops, and to save
transport, made advances to the cultivators of the neighbourhood on
condition of their growing grain in proportion for the soldiers.
The ostensible object was to fill the granaries, and the pretext for the
first actual loan was a period of distress arising from drought, which was
likely to drive the people to the usurers. Strange to say, the opposition to
this measure was as vehement and sustained as that in the case of the
laws and projects already described ; or indeed more so, as the grain loan
system continued in force for many years without ceasing to be denounced
as one of the chief causes of popular suffering. It is certainly not at first
obvious how the cultivators could be ruined by the formation of rural
banks making advances at moderate interest, and it is on this ground that
some have been inclined to suspect the sincerity of Wang-ngan-shi's

1 84 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
opponents, and to suggest that the opposition to his measures may really
have emanated from the usurers, whose victims were enabled, by his
beneficial reforms, to escape out of the hands of the spoiler.
Fortunately the grounds upon which Ssema-kwang, the leader of the
opposition, based his opinion, have been preserved by history, so that we
are able to judge whether, on this solitary occasion, the representatives of
learning and letters abandoned their wonted attitude of disinterested
philanthropy and suffered themselves to be made the mouthpiece, or the
tool, of the less creditable moneyed interests of the age.
The objections urged were in the main practical : You lend the people
corn for seed ; they are in want of food as well, and they begin consuming
some of the loan at once ; part they sell or exchange for other com
modities, necessary perhaps, but which they would otherwise have been
unable to obtain ; some relying perhaps on the loan will even cease to
work. Even if none of these things happen, it will be felt as a hardship
by all to have to give back part of the crop, which they have gathered
with their own labour and watched and looked on as their own, — nay, if
the season is bad, all the crop may be required to pay back the loan and
interest, and the family will be left without food as well as seed for the
coming year. Then they will try to evade payment, and the tribunal sent
to enforce it will not be content with the lawful dues alone. Officials
would grow rich : first, by embezzling the grain which was entrusted to
them for distribution; and, secondly, by multiplying costs and penalties
for failure or delay in the repayments ; and the people would be impover
ished by their debts, discontented with the exactions added to them,
and finally, perhaps, driven by despair into disorder and open rebellion.
These gloomy auguries were confirmed by appeals to experience. A
somewhat similar system of loans had long prevailed in Ssema-kwang's
native province of Shensi, and though, being old, the people did not
clamour for its abrogation, they were in the habit of attributing three-fifths
of their troubles to its existence. The other warning example he cites
will appeal to the sympathies of modern economists, with a keen sense
of the danger of pauperizing the working classes by charitable relief. He
refers, as a matter of common notoriety, to the failure of a benevolent
scheme of the Emperor Tai-tsong, who, after reconquering the province
of Ho-tong, caused granaries to be opened for the sale of corn at less than
cost price. No one, of course, was obliged to purchase from the Govern
ment stores ; but the habit of depending on them became so inveterate
that even when the prices were raised to the market level, they were still
exclusively frequented, to the destruction of ordinary trade and the con
tinued impoverishment of the district.
Of course, it was argued that the people need not borrow unless they
liked, and that if they wanted to borrow it must be a gain to them to be
able to do so upon advantageous terms ; but, on the whole, the balance of
worldly wisdom seems to have been on the side of the Opposition, who
believed that the people could take care of themselves, if they were left

THE INNOVATOR'S LAWS. 185
to do it in their own way, while yet they could not be depended on to
resist temptation put in their way by those who should know better.
Under good management, it was said, the people did not need to borrow,
even at 4 per cent.; yet when a loan is offered them they will accept it
for the sake of present ease, without considering how they will be able to
repay it.
The whole system of relief by public storehouses is, as will be seen
hereafter, open to abuse when the morals of the official class are at a low
ebb ; and we may believe that all the anticipated evils did result from the
new regulations. On the most favourable view the Innovator then appears
as a speculative financier anxious to fill the treasury at whatever risk or
inconvenience to the people's means or morals. But as in effect the
treasury really profited little, and the officials employed by it a great deal,
it is not surprising that the less charitable construction should have pre
vailed, and Wang-ngan-shi have been assumed, perhaps unjustly, to have
clung to his unpopular regulations for the sake of the opportunities these
gave for peculation.
A contemporary report complains that the commissioners had "received
on behalf of the Government service more than 75,300 string of money,
and that the 83,600 string lent as advances for the cultivators of land
yielded a sum of more than _^i6,6oo compound interest; but of all this
no more than 3,000 strings (? net) was received yearly." x It should be
observed that compound interest, which Wang is accused of exacting, is
not recognised by Chinese law and custom. Interest is high, but loans
are usually for short periods, and the interest is in no case allowed to
exceed the principal. The popular party was able to regard the costs of
the law courts as a greater danger than the exactions of usurers, exactly
because the claims of usurers were not supported by law.
If oppressed by tax-gatherers, Chinese villagers used to leave their homes
and take to brigandage till the Government tried conciliation and excused
the arrears ; if in danger of ruin from money-lenders, the same villagers
would simply have refused to pay more than they found themselves able to
afford in return for an old loan ; and their passive refusal to pay too much
would have the advantage of warning usurers not to devote their energies
by preference to the country districts. It is for the usurer's advantage to
keep indebtedness within limits, when the debtor cannot be sold up, and
the accumulation of interest is limited to the amount of the original debt.
Another unpopular proposal was that of selling certain " charity lands ; "
that is to say, State property obtained by confiscations or other means, and
set apart for benevolent uses. In recent times English financial authori
ties have been indignant at the immunity from taxation enjoyed by charit
able societies, and in all Moslem countries the revenue from land is
1 Ma-twan-lin, ap. W. Vissering, p. 152. At this rate, in round numbers, the interest
on the original loan of ^25,000 would have mounted up to ^5,000, i.e. 20 per cent.,
instead of 4 per cent., of which only ^400 or ^500, say 2 per cent., entered the exchequer !
An article in vol. ii. of the China Review contains the fullest account of Wang's laws.

1 86 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
materially reduced by the exemption of Wakf lands. It is possible that
Wang's attention was called to this subject by the scandalously small
proportion of cultivated land which paid the land tax, and it may have
been associated with his best measure, the order for a complete cadastral
survey of the whole country.
This was abandoned on his fall, and though resumed for a time, in the
reign of Tche-tsong, was unfortunately never completed. Its effect is
to be seen, however, in the increase of the area registered for taxation in
1084, to more than double what it had been in 1052, when the lowest
point was reached, and not much less than the maximum recorded in
1 02 1, just before the palmy days of the regency. Title-deeds, which are
mentioned as something new, were granted on occasion of the survey ;
and the simplicity of the cultivators and the perverse ingenuity of the
minor officials is illustrated afresh by the complaint that, when the land
was marked out into squares of a certain size 1 for the survey, the culti
vators were persuaded that odd lots outside the squares were of no value,
and so induced to sell them at a nominal price. Another unobjectionable
measure was the revival of the special Tribunal employed to regulate the
value of the money in use, by always issuing just as much as was necessary
to keep it at the same price.
Besides the Grain Loan law, the chief plan for raising revenue without
taxation was the so-called Barter law ; this was professedly intended to
revive the market regulations of the Chow Dynasty, which contemplated
sales and purchases of goods by the State, with the sole object of keeping
prices at the same level. I have not been able to meet with a clear
account of the working of this law, and in fact the transactions under this
head can scarcely be separated from those undertaken in connection with
the taxes and the transport commission. The only money with which the
State could buy, and the only goods it had to sell were those received on
account of the revenue. But there was more opportunity for purchases
on account of the Government when distant provinces paid their quota
in money instead of goods delivered direct for use. The Government
establishments opened under this law seem to have been something be
tween an Owenite Exchange Hall and a pawnshop. The State became
the chief trader, to the disgust of the literati and the masses alike ; and
private trade was ruined by the competition of the Government. Su-che's
prophecy, however, was fulfilled as to the absence of any real gain to
the Exchequer. In the passage already quoted from Ma-twan-lin, over
^20,000 is represented as employed on behalf of the public service ; and
supposing the Barter law to be as successful financially as the grain loans,
the total profit on the investment would be about ^400, and this in a
land where private traders still expect to clear 30 or 50 per cent, on their
modest capitals.
While the traders were complaining that their business was taken from
them, State benevolence tried to conciliate them with the offer of loans on
1 Possibly some such device gave reality to the nine squares of the tsing.

THE INNOVATOR'S LA I VS. lSl
the security of town lands or houses at 10 percent, interest for the half-year.
In fact, if the execution of all these schemes had been on a par with their
conception, and if the Chinese had been as manageable as the ancient
Egyptians, the great financial coup attributed to the Hebrew Joseph would
have been paralleled in China, and even without the help of the seven
lean years of famine, Wang-ngan-shi would have bought up on account of
the emperor the freehold of all China. The whole scheme foundered on
the rock which is really the corner-stone of the political economy of the
country — the conviction that ownership is based on use, as well as limited
by the discharge of civil obligations. The State could only be allowed to
make itself universal creditor on condition of extracting no more profit
out of the role than a private person would do ; and as both slavery and
serfdom were ceasing to find a place in the national manners, it was at
least a thousand years too late to establish State absolutism on an economic,
for want of a political basis.
No doubt there had been a time when Chinese emperors, had they
pleased, might have claimed for themselves the same boundless authority
as the Pharaohs ; and it is curious and significant of the force attained by
what (for want of a better word) we must call Constitutionalism in China,
that such would-be absolutists as Chang-yang, Wang-mang, and Wang-
ngan-shi should all have felt that their best chance lay in reviving ancient
customs with an altered spirit.
Like Wang-mang the Sung innovator included a new militia law
amongst his regulations. A revival of the local military levies was pro
posed in order to save the cost of regular armies. From every family in
cluding two or more adult males, one was required to serve as a soldier ;
the burden on the agricultural population was so great that numbers de
serted their homes, and the law could only be kept in force at all by an
expedient, which could scarcely have been proposed in any other country,
— that of exempting the peasants from its operation, a measure which of
course only made it bear the more oppressively on the other classes.
One more curious revival brings us to the end of the too learned legis
lator's schemes. The archaic custom of boarding out the horses and
cattle of the Chief among his retainers survived, it will be remembered,
in the days of Chow, so far as the officers of the imperial stable were
concerned. On this foundation, Wang-ngan-shi based a so-called " Law
for the protection of horses," a development of the local military system
applied to the maintenance of cavalry horses. The people were invited
to volunteer either to provide or to take charge of one or more horses for
the army. Nominally 250 bundles of hay, and payments in cloth and
money, were allowed for the maintenance of each horse ; but while the
charge was practically made compulsory, the allowances were embezzled
by underlings, and as the dead or diseased animals had to be replaced
at the keeper's expense, the opportunities for oppression were virtually
endless. It is not surprising that with all these new regulations, added to the

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190 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
occupation, would be nearly 1,300 acres, or 10,000 mow, a magnitude now
almost unheard of and always considered extravagant. The proportion is
doubtless mentioned because it is exceptional, and landlords who them
selves had to pay taxes could not have so many tenants, while there were
always freeholders who paid direct to the State. Still this glimpse of a
large class of cultivators, who would be omitted from the census, on the
ground of their not being taxpayers, is a sufficient reason for doubting
whether the population of the empire had ever declined as much as the
decline in the number of tax-paying families seems by itself to indicate.
Two classes of families are recognised in the Sung registers — the land
owners in their own right and those who farmed the land of others on a
kind of metayer system, who were described as "guests." With the
prevalence of subletting, laws and customs grew up for the protection of
the tenants, which are still in force, and have in effect robbed the role of
landlord of all its charms. A fair rent and fixity of tenure were secured to
the cultivator, and as the central Government again became strong enough
to assert its claims as overlord, by the appropriation of all waste or owner
less plots, its influence began to be felt again as formerly in preventing
rack-renting. The custom of letting land had become so common that in 997 a.d. a
minister, who was desirous to provide cultivators for the deserted fields
round Cai-fong-fu, proposed as the most natural course to let them to
willing tenants at a moderate rent, instead of ceding them out of hand, as
had been done in earlier times, or granting them for a term, subject to
redemption by the Crown, when the tenant ceased to rank as an able-
bodied taxpayer. When the land was granted for three years rent free,
the rent after that time was at first fixed at 50 per cent, of the produce,
following no doubt the precedent of the metayer system in use among
private persons; but the Government seems on the whole to have preferred
a fixed rent, subject to allowances for bad years. This rent may have
included a slight advance upon the ordinary land tax, to which the free
hold properties were subject, and indeed otherwise the freeholder who
had bought his farm would be at a disadvantage compared with the State
tenants who had paid nothing for a lease in perpetuity.
But it is obvious that, as freeholding again became the rule, the dis
tinction between the cultivator paying land tax for the farm of his ancestors,
and the cultivator paying rent for a smaller farm, would become more and
more unreal : the process by which the tax became a rent would reverse
itself, and the rent would recover its normal character of a land tax. The
land laws of the present dynasty, which, so far as concerns the agricultural
land of China, are substantially borrowed from the Ming, show us the out
come of the agrarian policy of the Sung. The drift of legislation, apart
from the Innovator's vagaries, was to assimilate the landlord's position to
that of the Emperor, and not conversely. Land could only be let at a fair
rent, and when once let, the farmer was not allowed to be disturbed with
out lesral cause.

THE INNOVATOR'S LAWS. 191
Nevertheless, large estates continued to grow, and in 1263 it was again
proposed to limit the amount of land which might lawfully be held
by a single owner to 100 mow ; and everything above this amount was
liable to be bought or confiscated by the Crown. It was considered a
proof of loyalty and liberality voluntarily to surrender such excess lands,
without waiting to have them claimed ; and a sufficiently absurd abuse is
said to have grown up in consequence, officers not possessed of any land,
but desiring to pay their court in this way, having obtained possession
tyrannically of other men's lands, that they might make a merit of sur
rendering them.
Choo-hi is said (in a work compiled under the Ming, 1602 a.d.) to
have put an end to disorders which prevailed in the district where he
resided by restoring the system of public storehouses for grain. It was
complained, that every spring and summer the rich closed their granaries
and sold corn at a high profit, till the poor forced them open for plunder,
riots and murders being multiplied. Choo-hi having taken counsel with
the people of the neighbourhood established a public granary from which
corn was issued at a steady price, security being taken for its repayment.
The satisfactory result was reported to the emperor, and other provinces
commanded to follow the same plan. The record of the grievance and
the popular mode of dealing with it is no doubt quite authentic, and the
story harmonises with what we are told of the attitude of the modern
Chinese towards speculators for a rise in corn. But it is not clear how
Choo-hi's action, which is praised, differs in principle from some of the
measures of Wang-ngan-shi, which were regarded as practically mischievous
as well as speculatively unsound. The fact seems to be that experiments
in State socialism in China are judged by their result, which is only satis
factory when they are devised and carried out by exceptionally able and
absolutely disinterested officials.

CHAPTER XVI.
TAXATION AND FINANCE UNDER THE SUNG.
Up to the year 102 1 the record of the area of cultivated land subject to
taxation continued to increase proportionately with the population. By
1052 it had fallen off unaccountably, — more than 50 per cent, — whilst the
number of tax-paying families still multiplied. Officers of the time, accord
ing to Ma-twan-lin, reported that as much as 70 per cent, of the cultivated
land escaped assessment; but this is probably an exaggeration, as if taken
literally, it would imply that a quarter of the whole area of China was
under cultivation, which is scarcely possible, considering the scantiness of
population in the wilder districts.1 It seems most probable that the large
landowners continued to defy the tax collectors, and it is possible that
while the State tenants were counted as householders in the census, their
lands, for which the rents were paid separately, were not counted as liable
for land tax.
It is not conceivable that the average size of holdings should have been
reduced by half in the course of thirty years, and the reference to a propo
sition made in 1062 to tax 20 per cent, of the cultivated lands, seems to
imply that then, at all events, no attempt was made to tax, nor therefore
to register, all the lands under cultivation. Usage oscillated between two
plans, both sanctioned by antiquity, of levying a certain percentage of the
whole produce and levying the whole produce of a corresponding fraction
of the productive land. Either plan was open to objection, and it is likely
that financiers from time to time thought it desirable to meet the abuses
that had grown up under one system, by reverting to the other, till that in
its turn became unworkable.
M. Biot 2 gives, after Ma-twan-lin, tables showing the total revenue from
direct taxation in the years 997, 1021, and 1077 a.d. Besides the large
contributions of grain, copper money, silk of various qualities, and fodder,
mention is also made of hempen cloth, gauze, tea, firewood, coal, feathers,
iron, and wood suitable for arrows; in 102 1, leather, salt, paper, and un
dressed hemp are also added. It would be useless to attempt an exact
valuation where there are so many necessary elements of uncertainty, but
the copper money received in 997 may be taken as worth under i\
1 Fokien, which in 1812 had an average population of 276 to the square mile, had
under the Sung only about 85, and the two Kwangs about 20 to the square mile, instead
of over 160.
2 Journal Asiatique, 3me serie, vol. vi. pp. 315-9.
392

TAXATION AND FINANCE UNDER THE SUNG. 193
millions sterling, and the grain for the same year, while worth perhaps
twice as much in money, would have served as rations for nearly five
million persons for a twelvemonth.
In 102 1 there is a slight increase in the grain receipts and a very
material increase (nearly 35 per cent.) in the copper money. By 1087,
when the area of tax-paying land had fallen off, the receipts in grain had
fallen from 21 and 22 million chi to 18 million, and the money receipts
were intermediate between those of the two former periods : in other
words, the growth of the revenue had been arrested, but there was no
positive falling off in its amount if the eighty years are taken together.
The increase of the receipts in copper seem to show that the Govern
ment had not been unsuccessful in its first attempts to deal with the standing
difficulty of the currency. The first innovation was the introduction of iron
money in addition to the familiar copper. Though it was even more cum
brous — a shilling's worth of iron cash weighed over 2 lbs. — yet it was found
less laborious to use iron money in remote provinces, where iron was found
and copper was not, than to import the necessary quantity of copper from
a distance. On this ground the use of iron money was first sanctioned in
Fokien and Sz'chuen, where it had been invented. So long as the iron
money was in use alone, no fresh inconvenience was felt except from its
great weight, and to meet this a first experiment in private banking was
tried in Sz'chuen. A certain Tchangyang invented the idea of notes or
coupons exchangeable for metal money at a specified .date : "this was not a
money;1 it was only a means of transporting the value of metal money."
After 997 this invention received further development.
Sixteen leading firms associated themselves for the purpose of issuing
kiao-tsze2 or bills of exchange, which were to be repayable at intervals of
three years over a total period of sixty-five years. The bills were at first
in great favour, and it is perhaps not surprising that some of the associated
firms should have been tempted by the confidence reposed in them to
indulge in rash speculations ; the heirs of some of the sixteen partners
were unable to meet their engagements, litigation followed, and as the
case was one not contemplated by the common law of China, no satis
factory issue was possible, and in 1017 the Company was wound up by
order of the local governor. The kiao-tsze, however, had become popular,
and their suppression gave rise to the more inconvenience because engage
ments could be made by their help, which it became exceedingly costly to
fulfil without them. Accordingly, in 1023 the Government itself established
a bank for the issue of bills of exchange, and private persons were prohibited
from engaging in the same business.
In other parts of the empire the " flying money " of the Tang had already
been re-introduced under the name of pien-tsing, or "convenient money."
1 Ma-twan-lin ap. Biot, Journ. As., yae six., torn. iv. p. 217.
2 The term tsien-yin = " stretching," as of a bow-string, is used for credit in general, and
besides the kiao-tsze we meet with hoei-tsze, private agreements or bonds ; kwan-tsze, or
frontier bills, used in paying army contracts, and promissory notes called tsing-ti=" some
thing to counter-balance a real possession."
VOL. II. — P.C. °

i94 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
These bonds when given in exchange for metallic deposits were of course
repayable on demand ; and they only served to increase the amount of
money in circulation, in so far as they passed from hand to hand oftener
than the money they represented would have done. Similar bonds seem
to have been given, as previously, on the security of tea, salt, or other
recognised values, and these were only repayable in kind, so that they
passed from hand to hand as money and could only be "cashed" by some
one in want of the commodities specified on the bill. The pien-tsing thus,
though a great convenience when money was scarce, were not a real paper
money : they could not be issued in excess, as the quantity in circulation
was regulated by the deposits of private persons ; according to Biot, it
never exceeded the moderate proportion of one in thirteen of the copper
money in use.
To set against this security, however, there was the inconvenience of the
original deposit which had to be reclaimed to time, and in the case of the
salt and tea bonds the necessity of converting the paper into goods within
a limited period. For all these reasons the pien-tsing disappeared from
use with the introduction of the Government bills of exchange, a real paper
money, which, like that of the first private banks, was to run for sixty-five
years, covering twenty-two triennial terms of repayment. In the middle of
the century the amount due for repayment at each term is said to have
been between ^300,000 and ^400,000.
The Government, it is obvious, had not realized that the object to be
aimed at was a permanent addition to the currency, limited only by the
credit of the State ; for the triennial cash payments seem to have been
made regularly for nineteen terms, so that the paper currency must have
contracted considerably before it was proposed (early in the administration
of Wang-ngan-shi) to redeem the expiring bonds with a new issue to run
for twenty-five terms, or seventy-five years in all.
Meanwhile the introduction of paper had done nothing to lessen the
evils arising from the joint use of iron and copper, or from the dearth of
both. To save the expense of carriage and to meet the cost of border
wars, mines and foundries were opened in the neighbourhood of the
armies, and the local metal, whatever it might be, was put into circulation.
Unfortunately, however, when copper and iron were used together, the
nominal value of the two coinages was not proportioned to their real com
parative value in exchange ; even that proportion fluctuated, and specu
lators exaggerated the fluctuation, so that all the disadvantages of a
bimetallic currency were introduced with little corresponding benefit.
Some idea of the confusion may be formed from the report of an official,
protesting against the instructions he had just received to buy up the
superfluous iron money at a fixed price. " For 40 copper coin," he observes,
" we get one pound of bad iron money, and 1,000 pieces of small copper
money may be exchanged for 1,000 iron pieces of a value of 2,000. A
thousand small iron pieces contain 6 lbs. of iron, and if people cast 2,000
pieces of it and exchange them for 1,000 copper pieces, the Government

TAXATION AND FINANCE UNDER THE SUNG. 195
in my humble opinion sustains a considerable loss." i The iron pieces, he
goes on, are bought and sold as bullion at half the price they bear as
coined money ; so to buy up the iron while still allowing the iron money
to circulate was indeed ruinous. The most practical remedy finally applied
was that of issuing copper money in some districts and iron in others ;
but this device could scarcely have been tried without the help of the
new paper money, to serve for the larger commercial transactions between
comparatively distant parts of the country.
The laws against the hoarding and exportation of metal were repealed by
Wang-ngan-shi, who seems to have been an advocate for as much free trade
as could survive the competition of the State as the greatest trader. His
critics complained that the country was drained of its metal currency to
supply the barbarians, while his defenders argued, like advanced econo
mists, that there could be no loss if the money went out in exchange for
goods, especially as it might be expected to come back again in exchange
for more goods. The defect in this reasoning seems to have been that
it assumed the Tatars to be a civilized and commercial people, instead
of half-reclaimed nomads, able to find a use for money when other people
would coin it for them, but, as a rule, more inclined to acquire such Chi
nese goods as pleased them by forays or blackmail than by the exchange
of commodities. In any case it is obvious that a metal currency which
was not sufficient in quantity for the needs of China proper could not
be scattered over Mongolia and Central Asia without aggravating the
domestic inconvenience.
As already mentioned, a fresh issue of kiao-tsze to run for thirteen years,
making in addition to the original term seventy-five years in all, was made
in 1072 a.d. ; these were to be exchangeable for the expiring bills of the
first issue. But in 1076 they were suspended on the pretext, we are told,
that the merchants realized too large a profit on their purchases and sales
at the expense of the Government. This may mean only that, by the help
of the Government paper, private commerce continued to realize a return
which the Innovator coveted in vain. We are not told exactly what hap
pened on the expiry of the kiao-tsze at the close of the nth century, but
the first years of the next century witnessed the issue of a new kind of
paper, issued in excessive quantities in the vain hope of so providing for
the expenses of the war against the Leao. This paper was not much in
request, and to mend matters the Government, which was in the hands of
Wang's successors, ordered that all payments above a certain value should
be made half in it and half in copper. The only result was that the
paper fell to a tenth and then to a hundredth of its nominal value.
The military collapse of the Empire diverted attention from its financial
failure, and as this money had been mainly used in the Northern provinces,
the Southern Sung left their creditors behind them. The credit of the
Government was not improved by the diminution in its territory, for barrier
bonds, issued 1131, for the sake of saving carriage, in payment of provi-
1 Visscring, Currency, p. 1 19.

196 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
sions delivered to the troops in Sz'chuen, were redeemed by the Govern
ment at only one-third of the price of issue, which of course made the
tradesmen unwilling to accept payment in such coin in future. After this,
one depreciated and inconvertible paper succeeded another, till in 1166 a
vigorous attempt was made to revert to specie payment, and a million
ounces of silver were employed to buy up the hoei-tsze in circulation.
This is the first time so large a sum of silver is mentioned, and we may infer
from it that the metal was already used, as now, in private commerce as a
medium of exchange by weight, but no attempt was made to introduce
silver money. From time to time attempts were made to apply the pre
cedents derived from the history of base copper money to the depreciated
paper. Sometimes it was accepted in payment of taxes, though more often
the Government helped to discredit it by only accepting it at its lowest
rates. The acme of perversity was perhaps reached in 1167 a.d., when it
was proposed to buy up the depreciated hoei-tsze at 10 per cent, of their
original value. Apparently this offer so far improved their credit that
private dealers were willing lo take them at a less severe discount, but this
was forbidden under heavy penalties. In 1133 the emperor Kao-tsung, in
speaking of the depreciated bills, naively suggested that Government offi
cials, who had a million strings of cash in their storehouses, should keep up
the credit of the paper by timely purchases ; but we do not learn that their
patriotism took this form, and in 1160 the laws against hoarding metal were
revived : ^6,000 was the maximum allowed to a Government official, and
half that sum for private persons.
Copper plates were used at this time for printing the notes instead of
wood, and the constant issues of fresh paper may be excused to a certain
extent by the flimsiness of the material, which caused them to wear out
rapidly. In 1210 a quantity of bonds were again bought up in Sz'chuen
by the Government, which dispatched gold and silver from the Treasury for
ihe purpose. Meanwhile the complaints about the exportation of the
precious metals continued, though the Kin had long proved their civiliza
tion, by issuing paper money themselves and reproducing most of the in
conveniences of Chinese finance ; that is to say, as soon as their convertible
paper money had become popular and its conversion was seldom demanded,
they hastened to discredit it by omitting to keep any cash reserve at all.
This would make the civilized subjects of the Northern Empire as anxious
to borrow copper from the South as their barbarian predecessors had been
and the Mongols still were; unfortunately, also, the first provinces to fall into
the hands of the Mongols were those whence the chief supply of copper was
derived, so that the material difficulties in the way of establishing a satis
factory currency were really great. Special bills of exchange were issued
to serve as a means of communication between districts, like those on the
two sides of the Hwai, which used respectively iron and copper money ;
and all the perplexities of the Government were aggravated by its habit
of treating the paper money as naturally and necessarily destined only for
local circulation.

TAXATION AND FINANCE UNDER THE SUNG. 197
A contemporary writer cited by Ma-twan-lin l thus describes the general
result : " After having tried for years and months to support and maintain
(the depreciated notes), the people had no longer any confidence in them,
but were positively afraid of them. For the payment for Government pur
chases was made in paper ; the funds of the salt manufactories consisted
of paper, the salaries of all the officers were paid in paper, the soldiers re
ceiving their pay in paper. Of the provinces and districts already in arrear
there was not one that did not discharge its debts in paper. Copper money,
which was seldom seen, was considered a treasure. The capital collected
together in former days to supply the border fortifications was a thing not
even spoken of any more. So it was natural that the prices of commodities
rose, while the value of the paper fell more and more. Among the people
this caused them, already disheartened, to lose all energy; the soldiers were
continually anxious that they should not get enough to eat, and the inferior
officials in all parts of the empire raised complaints that they had not
enough even to procure the commonest necessaries. All this was a result
of the depreciation of the paper money, and as the paper money depreciated
the metallic money is consequently depreciated likewise "
This last not very lucid sequence perhaps means that the depreciation of
the paper encouraged coiners to debase what was left of the copper money.
But we certainly hear less of this grievance under ihe Sung than before
the introduction of paper for general use. So far as the Government was
concerned, perhaps the sound views enunciated by one Kung-I, of
Nan-tsi, regarding the casting of money, may have come into general ac
ceptance. This sagacious person declares, albeit rather late in the day,
" That it is not allowed to be sparing of the copper or to grudge the
workmanship ; for as soon as the copper is not spared, the casting of money
is without profit, and if no profit is to be made, false coiners do not care to
arise ; this again is the reason that the money comes back in its full value
as it was cast, when it is withdrawn as well as when it is issued again . .
and this is the greater profit of the two."
If, to borrow Ma-twan-lin's phrase, the peculiarities of the institution of
copper money had been thus penetrated a few centuries sooner, Chinese
rulers would have saved themselves much trouble. And the same remark
applies to the Encyclopaedist's own criticisms on the use of paper money
in his own times.
After observing that it would have been sufficient to issue paper money
at the court alone, he continues : " At present there are besides the
already circulating Hoei-tsze (or bonds) the credit notes of Sz'chuen,
those of the Hwai provinces and the Hoei-tzse of the Hu region, and each
of those provinces prints and makes them for itself, and the end of it is,
that the repayment does not take place, and that they are no more a means
balancing the actual possession. How is this? VVith the very first
intention to institute this Hoei-tzse it was not originally so that they were
looked upon as money, but they were then considered to be of the nature
1 Ap. W. Vissering, On Chinese Currency, p. 207.

198 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
of the receipts for tea, salt, and other Government productions balancing
money only temporarily. . . . (The different notes were of different
values, but) there was only printed on the receipts that the merchants
must present them in order to receive for them tea, salt, aromatics or
(other) articles, and therefore for these notes a separation and division into
different districts was necessary, as for instance receipts for lump salt could
only circulate in Shensi, while receipts for crushed salt are current only in
the Kiangs and the Hwai regions.
"The Hoei-tsze, on the contrary, served to be given and taken in payments,
when private as well as public persons bought or sold something, without
its occurring that they disappeared not to be used any more " (like the
receipts). If they were thus to be used as a substitute for ordinary metallic
money, it was needless to have local issues with limited currency : the
paper money, as long as it was not in excess, was naturally used for its con
venience as widely as the metal it represented, and the restriction did not
prevent its ultimate depreciation. " The reason why later withdrawals and
repayments only produced new issues, and that after being repeatedly
increased, they at last fell in value as the number issued became greater,
is because in the beginning when the law was made and the plan discussed
the Government had not penetrated all the peculiarities of the institution "
(of the issue of paper money).1
Further criticism is needless, but as European economists have always
taken a lively interest in this first known experiment in the use of paper
money, it is well to note how far the experiment was influenced in China by
the analogies of earlier and perverse regulations regarding the scanty metal
currency. It may also be doubted whether the national loss and suffering
caused by the depreciated paper can have been as great in proportion as it
would in a community not already accustomed to every kind of monetary
inconvenience. At the present day, English merchants in China watch
with amusement the dexterity with which their clerks and errand boys play
the part of a money changer, spending vast ingenuity and knowledge of
the market to clear a single cent. Such a people are better able than
most to defend themselves against Government frauds.
We have the categorical assurance of Marco Polo, which counts for
something, that the paper money was taken readily by both native and
foreign traders. No doubt trade and commerce suffered from the confusion,
but the loss was probably more equally spread' over the community than
would be the case in any European country with a large and helpless wage-
receiving class. The political consequences were not the less disastrous on
this account. The Southern empire was not ruined economically ; but in
proportion as the cost of the depreciation of the paper was borne by the
richer classes, their loyalty to the existing regime was impaired, and dis
organization began, which was not less dangerous than that of feudalism,
though of a different kind.
,: Riches are the handle held by the rulers of men," according to a
1 Vissering, On Chinese Currency, p. 212.

TAXATION AND FINANCE UNDER 7 HE SUNG. iS9
minister of Wen-ti, who was urging his master not to allow private mints.
The issues of provincial notes, not available throughout the empire, pro
bably did more than any other single measure to counteract the centraliz
ing policy by which the first Sung emperors hoped to save their empire
from dismemberment. The dynasty was not destroyed by a discontented
commercial class, but it was not defended with loyalty by any class ; as
Marco Polo says, the country would never have been lost if the people had
but been soldiers ; and to make soldiers of the peace-loving Chinese the
central Government always needed to make itself at once strong and
popular, so that its existence and maintenance should be associated
in the minds of the multitude with their actual enjoyment of peace and
plenty. In the 12th century and the first half of the 13th, peace and plenty
indeed reigned in Southern China, but the emperor's share in securing
these boons was negative ; he did not plunder his people of the fruits of
their own industry, and he did not attack the neighbours he would have
been unable to resist. The power of peace and war thus rested first with
the Kin and then with the Mongols, and so the allegiance of the Chinese
was half transferred beforehand to their new rulers.
The development of trade and industry indicated by the size and mag
nificence of the principal towns probably contributed, with the scarcity of
money, to increase the price of the necessaries of life.
In some of the tables of taxes paid in kind, the chi of rice is put down
as equivalent to a string of cash (1,000), which is more than three times as
much as the price current under the Tang. M. Biot inclines to think that
this is too high, and quotes an example from an arithmetical text-book by
the great Choo-hi to show that 500 or 600 cash was a more usual price.1
But prices even in English text-books are apt to become somewhat
traditional, and a Chinese Colenso would be more likely to perpetuate in
his examples the supposed prices of Yao and Shun than to follow the
fluctuations of the contemporary market. In any case the rise in the value
of agricultural produce would not bear hardly on the peasantry while they
still formed the bulk of the population and received the price of their crops
themselves. We learn incidentally from the famous litterateur, Su-tung-po,2
that the owner of an estate, which brings in 1,000 pieces of silk per annum,
is a rich man, who might live in a palace and enjoy all the pleasures of
luxury. Unfortunately, we are no more able to put a price on the roll of
silk than on the chi of rice of the period, but when we last compared these
values they stood at about y. 3d. ; so if the price of silk had remained
unchanged since the Tang, a rich man in the nth century would have
rejoiced in the income of ^162 ios., or under ^500, even supposing the
price to have trebled, as is scarcely probable.
1 Journ. As. , Sept. 1838, p. 320.
2 Giles, Gems, p. 196.

CHAPTER XVII.
TWO LITERARY STATESMEN OF THE SUNG DYNASTY.
There are many eminent scholars of the Sung age of whom we know
little except that they were opposed to Wang-ngan-shi, and wrote commen
taries on the Yi King. Of all to whom this description applies, the palm
of eloquence was by common consent awarded to Su-che, whose strictures
on the Government have already been quoted. The life of this worthy,
like that of Ssema-kwang, has a more than personal interest, as the account
of his administration J gives a clearer picture than we have yet obtained of
the way in which the Chinese ideal of paternal government was realized
under the occasional rule of learned and popular governors.
After his report on the disaffection of the graduates, he was naturally
out of favour at court, and his disgrace took the form of appointment
to the governorship of Hang-chow. The neighbourhood had suffered
severely from brigandage, and even more from the excesses of the troops
sent to put down the brigands. The new governor's discriminating firm
ness soon restored order, the officers who had connived at oppression were
put to death, the common soldiers pardoned, and the people protected.
The water supply of the town was in a deplorable state ; the reservoirs
built during the Tang Dynasty and the canals which fed them had been
allowed to fall out of repair, and the public health was suffering from the
want of drinkable water. Money was scarce and the necessary works very
extensive, but the governor posted an eloquent proclamation, beginning
with the elementary proposition of modern sanitary science — that nothing
contributes so much to preserve the health and life of mankind as a
sufficient supply of wholesome water — and then appealing to the people to
do the necessary work themselves, without payment, for the good of
posterity and their own parents and children.
Canals and cisterns were cleaned, the lake dredged and dyked, and the
embankment laid out as an ornamental promenade, with bridges over the
openings for admitting water into the town reservoirs from the Kiang and
the lake. The new causeway was formed almost entirely of the refuse and
soil obtained in deepening and cleansing the lake bottom, and besides
serving as a convenient roadway, it was planted with avenues of trees and
became a favourite pleasure resort of the citizens. Martini describes the
lake as still edged in his time with quays of cut stone and crossed by
1 Memoir es concernant les Chinois, vol. a. pp. 70-107.

TWO LITERARY STATESMEN. 201
causeways, furnished with lofty bridges to allow of the passage of boats ;
and, though the city itself has much contracted in size and splendour
since Marco Polo's day, the Chinese still regard it as a paradise and sober
Englishmen as "a spot of peculiar attraction" — which might surely be
heightened by a little knowledge of its historic associations. Part of the
shore of the lake Si-hou planted by him with trees and water-lilies is still
called " The quay of Master Su." All the neighbourhood had contributed
cheerfully to the work, which was accomplished in four years. In com
memoration of its success the citizens had their governor's portrait taken,
and every householder insisted on providing himself with a copy.
Su-che belonged to a younger generation than Ssema-kwang, having only
taken his degree in 1057, and the vicissitudes of his career were not yet
over. He was removed to Su-chow, where his rule was equally beneficent.
But on his next change of office, when required by custom to write a letter
of thanks to the emperor, he allowed himself again to remonstrate on the
subject of the new regulations ; and his eloquence being of a rather fiery
kind, his enemies took the opportunity of accusing him, not only of ad
dressing the emperor in an improper manner, but also of having written
certain biting satires and epigrams which were in the mouths of all men.
The point of some of these is visible even to the European eye, and others
only need to have their allusions explained for us to appreciate the sensation
caused by such a revival of the plain-speaking of the satirical odes. Wang-
ngan-shi may be excused if he thought there was not room in the same
Government for him and the author of an epigram : " Kwan was employed
by Yao and put to death by Shun ; how many Kwans will have to be put
to death by the successor of our august Yao, the wise prince under whom
we have the happiness of living ! "
The following was a propos of a duty on salt, and alludes to an anecdote
of Confucius, who was so enraptured by some ancient melodies called
Chao-yo that for three months afterwards the choicest delicacies made no
impression on his palate, — he had no taste for anything but the music.1
" Who can doubt the power of the music Chao ? its effects have been
renewed in our own days. For three whole months our food has lost its
savour!" — the fact being that for three months the people had either
gone without salt or procured it contraband, rather than supply themselves
from the Government stores. A treasonable sense was ascribed to other
less intelligible verses, and, notwithstanding the emperor's admiration for
all Su-che's writings, and his reluctance to have them misinterpreted, the
satirist was deprived of his charges and imprisoned, though not for long,
and then sent to reside under surveillance in a provincial town.
In 1072 the Emperor was advised that it was time to have the historical
memoirs of his dynasty arranged, and he at once proposed that the com
mission should be given to Su-che, for whose style he had an inextinguish
able admiration. He had already, some ten or twelve years previously,
suggested that Su-che should be employed as one of the historians of his
1 Analects, vii. p. 13.

202 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
own reign, but was dissuaded by Wang, who had a well-grounded forebod
ing of the figure he and his master were likely to cut in a history written
by the most eloquent of their critics. When the emperor's proposal was
overruled, a certain Tseng-kong was appointed. He tried his skill upon
the interesting reign of the founder of the dynasty, and the result was
submitted to the emperor, who, having read to the end, asked for pencil
and paper, and wrote silently : " I appoint Su-che to the post of historio
grapher." Apparently at this time, though the reigning emperor did not read what
was written of his own days, the memoirs of previous reigns were open to
inspection, and were edited from time to time, when the moment had come
for an impartial revision. In a literary age no doubt the tendency was to
abridge increasingly the conventional delays. The official history of the
Tang Dynasty was not put in hand till the year 1060, and the incomplete
ness of the previous works of unofficial writers was explained by the
statement that they had not had access to the documents of the Tribunal
of History, which were now made public for the first time. The reigning
Sung emperors apparently wished to do for their own immediate prede
cessors what had hitherto only been done for the preceding dynasty.
When Tche-tsong began to govern in 1093, the regulations of Wang-
ngan-shi were revived, and Su-che was again hunted by his enemies from
one post to another and finally exiled on a renewed charge of satirizing
the Government. At his place of banishment, no house was provided for
his residence, and the officials refused to render him any assistance ; so he
resorted to his old method of appealing to the general public. He posted
up a placard : " The exiled Su-che wishes to build a but, but has not the
wherewithal." All the passers-by stopped to read, and the scholars began '
to exclaim one to another : " Su-che ! the great man who saved Stt-chow
from inundation and made the great causeway in the lake Si-hou ! surely '
it is our business to work for him if he is in need of help ; " and promptly
a subscription was opened and a neat dwelling built, where the exile pro
ceeded contentedly to edit the commentary on the Yi King begun by his
father. He died in 1100, just after the amnesty for a new reign which put
an end to his exile.
One of the most interesting documents bearing on the private life of the
period is the will of the learned doctor Yang-chi1 (died 1132), whose
testamentary counsels to his children show, with rather touching simplicity,
how the principles of Confucian morality are still expected to regulate the
conduct of Chinese households. His last will and testament is a quite
practical document, but he begins it by summing up the theoretical base
of good behaviour. A man must choose his line in life beforehand ;
every one wishes to live wisely, and the first step to that result is to set the
will resolutely and consistently towards it ; action is determined by the
promptings of the heart, which therefore must be guarded against corrupt
ing influences and trained in the love of justice. But the heart is guided
1 Mem. cone, les Chinois, iv. p. 196, and x. p. 119 ff.

TWO LITERARY STATESMEN. 203
by the thoughts, and therefore the thoughts of the mind must be rigorously
examined and controlled, the good thoughts adopted by the heart and
translated into action and the evil ones rejected and forgotten. If the
heart cleaves to the True and the conscience to the Good, Heaven and all
beneficent influences will be favourable; while those who take the opposite
course will find Heaven, Earth, all spiritual influences, and the remorse of
their own consciences against them.
After this prelude, the document passes at once to practical matters.
The sons are assured that it is not at all necessary to take a literary degree
or to obtain office ; but if they do the latter, they must not disgrace their
father's memory by failing in uprightness or zeal for the common good.
Their mother is an excellent and right-minded woman, they must conform
in all things to her views ; if they fail in piety towards her, their father's
ghost will punish them — if it can. The two brothers are enjoined to live
together without dividing their inheritance ; the character of the younger
one is impetuous, and his elder is requested to bear with him in this
respect, while the younger is charged to apologise if he has offended.
Both brothers are married, the elder to the daughter of a graduate, the
younger to the daughter of an officer. Unless both husbands look to it,
this circumstance may lead to incidents fatal to domestic peace and de
corum. The mandarin's daughter is not to dress too gaily, which would try
her sister-in-law's patience ; the best way will be for them to dress alike,
and the brothers should set them the example. They should also all take
their meals together; if each dined apart with his wife, they would, before
long, love each other less. If any dispute arises between them, they must
refer it to the arbitration of friends, and in no case go to law ; if either
were guilty of an appeal to the magistrate, the other was to produce this
Will to convict him of a breach of filial piety ; the wise magistrate will
doubtless then exhort and admonish the dissentient, so as to effect a
reconciliation, for which he may count upon the testator's gratitude — if the
souls of the dead have any power to serve the living.
There are four cousins in the family who have not been on very friendly
terms with the testator, but he exhorts his sons to respect them, and in
regard to certain family property, of which the division is not yet complete,
they are rather to yield part of their just rights than engage in litigation.
The sons are warned to beware of persons who may try to profit by their
youth, to lead them into extravagance and licentiousness ; they are urged
to use their studies as a means of spiritual cultivation, not to waste time
upon the poets, but to read the Classics with a good master, and cultivate
the society of solid and right-minded persons of independent judgment.
The apartments of the women should be kept as secluded as possible,
and the girls over ten strictly confined to them ; visits from outside should
be discouraged ; there are women who only come to promote intrigues
and encourage secret sales and thefts.
There should be a storehouse for the provisions, such as wine, oil, fruit,
and salt meat, and a barn for rice and vegetables ; the accounts and keys

2o4 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
should be kept by the master of the household. The table should be
frugal, clothing suitable to one's station, and useless expenditure on furni
ture and buildings, for the sake of imitating neighbours, rigidly avoided.
The 400 mow of good land, of which the estate consists, should suffice
for the two sons, but economy will be necessary ; if they wish to add to
the property for their children's sake, they are warned, on no account.
to run risks with borrowed money ; in general, the thirst for wealth is a
folly ; expenses and burdens increase faster than revenues, and the rich are
exposed to many vexations besides the chance of official persecution.
Then follows a characteristic paragraph, in which the sons are told, in
quaint detail, how to cultivate the kind of good manners which the bar
barians Jou and Jouy admired in the State of Chow ; they are never to take
the best place or the best piece for themselves ; to return courtesy for rude
ness, and, if they are ever obliged in self-respect to stand on their dignity,
they must be careful not to appear in the least contemptuous. Maxims
that Macchiavelli or La Rochefoucauld would have turned into cynical
epigrams are laid down in all seriousness and good faith as a part of
politeness and morality. The good that one sees done should be praised
and published, and the evil one hears forgotten. If somebody says, "So-and-
so has done you a service," you should answer : " It is the more generous
on his part, as I have never been able to oblige him in any way." If you
are told that somebody else is speaking against you, reply : " We have
always been on good terms, and I cannot believe that he would wish to
affront or injure me." Both answers will be repeated to those whom
they concern, and even the ill-will, if it existed, will be disarmed by
such charitable disbelief. Such conduct is not only virtuous, it is the
only way to secure the peace and tranquillity of a household.
The testator proceeds to lay down rules for his sons' conduct towards
their other relations. He himself had a full brother and two sisters (the
tie between the children of different mothers is evidently not a close one).
This uncle has four sons, all rich and prosperous ; these need no help,
but both aunts are in poor circumstances, and the sons are charged to care
for and respect them as their own father. Two other aunts and any other
relations are to be assisted as far as possible in case of need, as for funeral
or marriage expenses, and this duty is irrespective of their friendliness or
good behaviour. A younger sister is to be assisted liberally as long is
her husband's circumstances are such as not to make her independent ;
and the sons are solemnly exhorted not to grumble or remonstrate at any
presents their common mother may like to give her daughter. The family
of Yang-chi has certain customs in regard to the teachers of different
generations ; it is not stated what they are, but the sons are exhorted to
observe them, and warned against the ingratitude of the age ; sons and
grandsons, it is said, should share or inherit these feelings of gratitude, so it
is probable that the customs referred to include some system of gifts or
pensions to former tutors.
The last clauses of the Will refer to the provision to be made for servants

TWO LITERARY STATESMEN. 205
and dependants. There is a favourite youth who has been brought up
in the family ; 50 mow and a cottage adjoining the family burial ground
should be given him, if he' proves trustworthy and loyal to the family
interests ; but this is only provisional : if he tries to make a purse for
himself, the sons are discharged from all obligations towards him ; but if he
behave well, they are in due time to make over 20 mow and a little
house as a gift to him in perpetuity. Three servants, who have attended
the testator for many years in the exercise of his magisterial duties, are
to receive 20 mow each, and houses by the family cemetery ; but these
are not given in absolute ownership, and may not be let or alienated.
Nothing is said about the children of these servants, and their claim to
inherit the above privileges . would doubtless be decided equitably when
it arose. There is no attempt to restrain the natural liberties of each
generation by the authority of the dead hand.
Such a will, it is evident, could only be administered without litigation
when its provisions were in accordance with popular custom and expecta
tion ; and if it was usual and proper for the modest estate of a gentleman
of high official rank to be bequeathed subject to so many charges, for the
benefit of poor relations, good servants and young dependants, we need
not seek further for an explanation of the still subsisting scarcity of large
fortunes and the generally equal distribution of wealth in China. This
will has probably been preserved on account of its literary merits, but there
is nothing in the substance o* it that would be out of date or place in the
present century or dynasty ; and it shows even more clearly than Su-che's
proclamations, how little change the course of centuries has effected in the
paternally democratic organization of Chinese society.
The homely details of the paternal instructions gain in interest when we
learn that their author was an illustrious scholar — one of those said to
know all the Classics by heart at the age of thirteen x — whose reputation
had spread as far as Corea while he was still occupying a private station.
After his name was brougl before the Emperor, he was made inspector of
the Imperial College ; and he is said to have given good advice, in vain,
concerning treaties with the Tatars. He urged the emperor to fortify the
frontier, instead of sending one army after another to be destroyed beyond
it ; and when complaints were made of the scarcity of soldiers and the
multiplication of students, he proposed to discharge all the unpromising
scholars in the hope that some of them would take to arms. Instead of
this, they rioted, and Yang-chi had to be sent to quiet them, which he did
by pointing out that they certainly deserved to be dismissed, if they could
so far forget the teachings of Confucius and Mencius as to resist lawful
authority. 1 lam indebted to Mr. R. K. Douglas for some of these particulars.

CHAPTER XVIII.
CONTROVERSIES, THE SCHOOLS AND THE EXAMINATIONS.
The feuds which had raged for the last generation were inherited and
continued by the scholars and politicians of the 12th century. Under
the regency in 1087 the use of Taoist and Buddhist authorities in the
examinations had been forbidden, together with that of Wang-ngan-shi's
dictionary; but the revival of the political regulations of the Innovator
in 1093, was naturally followed by the rehabilitation of his literary
authority, and ten years later an inscription defamatory of Ssema-kwang
and his adherents was ordered to be engraved and posted up in all the
towns of the empire. An engraver in the town of Chang-ngan was
ordered to execute the work, but having read the inscription, he declined
the commission, explaining with becoming courtesy that a man of his small
capacity and scanty learning was unable to understand the utility of an
inscription attacking the zeal and integrity of so eminent a public servant.
Upon this the engraver was arrested and threatened with punishment ; he
then expressed his willingness to yield under compulsion, but he begged
not to be obliged to affix his signature to the tablet,1 so that he might
escape the blame of posterity. History records that the officers were
overwhelmed with confusion at this reply, and ordered the enlightened
artisan to be set at liberty.
In 1 1 13 the laws against the Taoists were repealed, and in 11 16 the
emperor established public schools for the propagation of their doctrines.
In 1 129, amidst all the turmoil attendant on the division of the empire,
Kao-tsong atoned for all previous insults to the memory of Ssema-kwang
by placing his portrait among those of the imperial ancestors. During
the unfortunate reign of Hoei-tsong, the Innovator's commentaries had
been again in use, and his portrait placed in the temple of Confucius by
the side of Mencius. But after various vicissitudes, in 1241, this honour
was conferred upon a number of his contemporary and posthumous ad
versaries, and he himself was degraded, as one who did not fear Heaven,
or follow in the ancient ways.
The years of peace enjoyed by the southern Sung towards the close
of the 1 2th century, when the aggressions of the Kin had ceased and
those of the Mongols had not yet begun, were taken up with internal
disputes. In 11 78, a censor, scandalized at the eternal animosities of
the schools of Wang-ngan-shi and Tching-y (whom most of the orthodox
1 As the Li Ki required every artisan to do to his handiwork.

THE SCHOOLS AND THE EXAMINATIONS. 207
revered as the master of their masters), entreated the Emperor to cut the
disastrous controversy short by prohibiting the works of both authors.
This heroic measure was not adopted, and a virtual victory was secured to
the school of Tching-y by a privy councillor, who, disguising his own par
tisanship, induced the Emperor to pronounce himself, in general terms,
in favour of the writings of the ancients, among whom Wang could by no
possibility be counted.
Choo-hi, whose commentaries on the Classics have been frequently
alluded to, was the most prominent literary statesman of the period. He
was born in 1130, of poor parents, and was somewhat rustic in dress and
exterior. In 1172 he completed the classical abridgment or Kang-mou
of Ssema-kwang's history, a jejune abstract standing to the full history in
the relation occupied by the Chun-tsew of Confucius to Tso's commentary.
In 1 1 79 he was employed as commandant of the troops at Nan-kang, and
addressed a long memorial to the emperor, who had invited all officers
above a certain rank to submit to him their views as to the reforms which
should be undertaken in consequence of bad harvests. Choo-hi advised
that the best way of relieving the people, without cost to the State, would
be to disband the troops and set them to reclaim waste lands, while train
ing a sort of militia that could be called out in case of need.
The public revenue in salt, tea, and rice for the whole province of
Kiangsi was put at his disposal for carrying out his plan. His courage and
disinterestedness were on a level with his zeal for the public good ; and
when an officer with influential friends, whom he had accused of malver
sation, tried to quash the prosecution by getting Choo-hi promoted to a
higher post, he refused to be so blinded, and declined the appointment.
Yet this learned and sagacious statesman was not proof against the weak
ness of the age. He and another scholar of the name of Lin-tin had a
controversy respecting interpretations of the Yi King, which assumed such
virulence that Choo-hi refused an office in the Board of War, offered by
the Emperor himself, because his adversary already had a seat there; and
the latter was so indignant that the offer should have been made, that he
presented a memorial against Choo-hi as vehement as any that had been
launched against the Innovator himself.
M. Biot compares the debates upon the King carried on at the Imperial
court with those of the theologians, who disputed at Constantinople about
the interpretation of the Gospels, while the Turks were within a few days'
march of the city. True patriots were seriously alarmed at a state of
things which recalled the internal dissensions of the reign of Tche-tsong,
followed by the dismemberment of the empire. The author of an in
teresting memorial, dated 1189, describes the change which had taken place
in the interval between his first and second appearance at court. The
scholars had begun to form parties rather than schools, and were more
concerned to effect the ruin of their rivals than to promote the interests
of the empire or even to establish those opinions which were the occasion
of disimte.

208 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
Choo-hi himself was a rather startling and rationalistic commentator,
and though his rejection, in the name of common sense, of a good many
traditional interpretations, would not alone have sufficed to raise the
theological storm, when men's minds were already embittered, they were
enough to cause the reproach of innovation to be hurled as freely from
one side as the other. Whatever the rights of the controversy might be,
the dissensions were an evil per se, and the Memorialist concluded by
entreating the Emperor himself to lay down the law with authority, and
proscribe at one stroke both heresy and discussion.
In the next reign, 1194, the controversy assumed a fresh shape, and a
comedy was performed before the new emperor of which the object was
to ridicule the dress and manners of Choo-hi and his disciples.1 The
Commentator was dismissed the court, but his adherents resented his dis
grace, so that the quarrel waxed warmer than ever. His doctrine was
traced back, to prove its orthodoxy, through several generations of scholars
to Tching-y and his brother, who professed to teach nothing save the
truths of Chung-ne and Mang-tze ; but on the other hand it was easily
shown that Choo-hi rejected the interpretations of many intervening com
mentators who had been accepted as teaching, and intending to teach,
Confucian truth. The shades of difference between the two parties were
so slight that a neutral tinted edict, like the one which in 1178 secured
the victory for Tching-y's school, was now held to mark the defeat of his
titular disciple. The people were commanded (1195) to adhere to the
doctrine of Confucius and not rely upon the authority of commentators.
This was intended and accepted as a crushing condemnation of those
who believed in the commentaries of Choo-hi and the latter took up the
challenge and composed an audacious protest which he intended to pre
sent to the Emperor. His friends and family adjured him not to court
destruction, but he was deaf to all prudential remonstrances, and only
finally agreed to burn the dangerous document after consulting the tri-
grams, which gave an oracle to the effect that the opinion of the majority
was to be followed. Choo-hi died in 1200, while still out of favour
having borne with philosophy the desertion of fair-weather friends. It is
noticeable that the historians regarded it as an unworthy piece of hypo
crisy, that some of his adherents sought to escape the storm of persecution
by renouncing the scholar's robe and taking to commerce.
The crowd of disciples anxious to attend his funeral was so great that
the local magistrate applied to the Emperor for instructions, and to avoid
the danger of disturbance the ceremony was ordered to be privately per
formed. A disciple, indignant at the cowardice of his fellows, wrote a
memorial in defence of the master's memory, and when no one could be
found willing to present it to the Emperor, he struck the drum, which hung
at the palace gate, as a last resource for the oppressed, and compelled the
reluctant officials to take charge of his appeal. He treated his judges with
very un-Chinese impertinence, but was only sentenced to exile. In 1202
1 De Mailla, viii. p. 6-u.

THE SCHOOLS AND THE EXAMINATIONS. 209
the leader on the other side, though still in power, made the fortunate
discovery that persecution was not the best way to cool the zeal of parti
sans, and peace was restored by an edict which allowed freedom of
opinion but forbade disputes under heavy penalties.
The periodical examinations were held regularly under the five posterior
dynasties, though literature and learning were neglected. In 930 we
find the head of the imperial college complaining that the students' fees
(about twelve shillings) remained unpaid, and Ma-twan-lin. regards the
attempt to exact them as part of the general venality of the age, when poor
scholars were oppressed and administrative offices put up for sale. Wood-
engraving or printing from blocks, which was introduced in 953 for
printing bank notes, was almost immediately applied to the multiplication
of books, and in 983 mention is made of steel plates to be delivered to
the imperial college, which received divers other benefactions from the
two first emperors of the dynasty.
The provincial colleges had almost ceased to exist, and the first step
towards their reorganization seems to have taken the form of charters,
granted to existing libraries founded by private persons or associations.
Such libraries had schools attached to them, and when these were well
attended and thriving it was obviously needless for the Government to
incur the expense of fresh foundations. In the neighbourhood of the
modern Nan-king, one of these libraries was founded and endowed with
lands for its support ; in all six such libraries and schools were recognised
in different parts of the empire, and their organization was imitated in the
official establishments afterwards founded : the supply of the cantonal
schools was left to the discretion of the local functionaries.
M. Biot gives, after Ma-twan-lin, full particulars x respecting the examina
tions, including the rules followed in marking papers under the Sung. It
was considered a frivolous reason for putting candidates in the first rank
that they had finished their papers sooner than others. The list of
literary statesmen who made the dynasty famous in spite of its defeats, is
enough to show that the examinations did bring men of varied ability into
the public service. We hear less than formerly of the jealousy shown by
the Board of Offices to the competitors selected by the Board of Rites,
and, as M. Biot observes, the bestowal of the highest degrees was re
garded as an important affair of State. In 983, for instance, it is recorded
in the Annals that three scholars were bracketted, so to speak, senior
wranglers, and all three at once made prefets d'arrondissement of the
second grade.
The old " College of the Four Gates " was re-established by Gin-tsong in
1043, and admitted both sons of officers and promising scholars taken
from the ranks of the people. The " Great College " was reorganized
later and did not reach its full number of 900 pupils till 1068. About the
same time complaints were made of the quality of the teaching at the
1 Essai sur V histoire de [Instruction publique en Chine et de la corporation des lettres.
Paris, 1845, p. 341. P

2io OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
State colleges, where the teachers were ill paid, as well as at the surviving
private schools. The students came, not for love of learning, but to
qualify for a post in the public service, and having got the desired office
or degree, troubled themselves no more about their books ; hence the
number of competent teachers fell off, with the result of still further
lowering the standard of education. It is quite possible, however, that
these complaints were partly also a sign that the examinations were being
taken more seriously than before, and were being watched by really
learned scholars on behalf of the Government.
A Commission to inquire into the conduct of the examinations had
been appointed, which made its report the year before Wang-ngan-shi
came into office. One member of the commission reported in favour of
abolishing the demand for original verses from the candidates, another
wished to have the morals of the competitors alone considered, and a
third defended the existing system. Under these circumstances the
Innovator had an easy task ; and his recommendations as usual had a
plausible side. Under the plea of making the study of the Classics more
practical, he abolished the tests in mere caligraphy and the verse com
positions ; and, to ensure the Classical texts being understood, instead of
only learnt by heart, the examinations were to include the meanings —
as expounded in his own commentaries.
In 107 1 a thousand moiv were allotted to each district college, in
addition to their other endowments, to provide for the maintenance of
the students, and in 1079 a vain attempt was made to enlist the
sympathies of the professoriate on the side of the new regulations, by
making an allowance for the support of the district colleges, out of the
proceeds of the land and house-tax and the interest on the State loans.
In the same year the " Great College " was reconstituted and divided into
three grades, with 2,000 students in the first, and 300 and 100 re
spectively in the second and third ; and the magnificent annual income
of 180,000 string of cash was allotted to it. The highest class had
privileges in regard to examinations and employment, so it is to be
supposed that the object was to attract the best scholars to the college
from the open provincial examinations.1
But the literati, who as a body seem never to have much loved or
trusted the State colleges, were not likely to be attracted to them when
serving as a Propaganda for the views of the hated Innovator. And to
overcome their reluctance and obtain a supply of civil servants trained to
believe in the new regulations, the very strong measure was taken, in 1103,
of abolishing the public competitions for the higher degrees. Three
grades like those of the great college were introduced, and success in
each degree meant promotion to a higher school, while it became im
possible for private students to obtain employment without passing through
the training colleges. This was virtually giving the State patronage into
the hands of the college staff, who were thought capable of sending up
1 Essai sur ! Instruction publique en Chine, p. 347.

THE SCHOOLS AND THE EXAMINATIONS. 211
students for promotion in return for bribes. Any way it was said that the
number of graduates was improperly increased, and in less than twenty
years the open examinations were restored.
A summary of the teachings of Choo-hi, published in 1602 by Ka'o pau,1
contains interesting details, which may probably be regarded as au
thentic, since the sayings and doings of the head of a school in China are
dutifully written down by his immediate disciples, whose works are faith
fully reproduced by the successive generations of commentators. Accord
ing to this work, when in office, Choo-hi himself as minister selected all
the superior officials except the prefects and district superintendents, who
were nominated by the Crown. The higher officers were allowed to
select their subordinates, but the minister dismissed any who misbehaved
and only bestowed promotion on those who deserved it by their services.2
He introduced a regular system of examinations, dividing the Classics into
three groups, the Yi-King, the Shoo, and the Shi forming the first, the three
Li the next, and the Chun Tsew with three commentaries the third. He
gave out in advance in which King and which historical book the papers
would be set, and by taking them all in turn obliged the candidates to
go through a serious course of study in all.
In 1142, the Southern Sung opened a "Great college "at their new
capital, and 5,000 students entered to compete for the 300 vacancies. A
few years later we hear of complaints that rich families had appropriated
the college lands to their own use ; and the Emperor, by way of putting
matters to rights, ordered some of the lands belonging to the Buddhists
monasteries to be given to the defrauded colleges instead of their own.
Choo-hi described the estates of one college, and maintained all to be
insufficiently endowed in proportion to the number of students admitted.
The State was, however, too poor to do more for them, and the critical
commentator frankly admits that he does not know how the ancient
dynasties contrived to pay for the elaborate system of education which
they are supposed to have maintained.3 He contents himself with the
surmise that, as the State was then sole proprietor of the land, it may
have endowed the colleges so ; and we may be content to take his
authority for the fact that China could not in his day support more than
a part of the institutions described in the Chow Li, and conjecture accord
ingly that even in the days of Chow the system described was an ideal
rather than a transcript from reality.
Choo-hi is made to quote Mencius, for the opinion that nothing is
more useful than to record and publish how much the people of every
tcheou and every Men make out of an acre of land, how much they pay in
taxes, and how much in contributions over and above the ancient custom ;
what was the annual revenue in money and food of each division, how it
1 Journal Roy. As. Soe. (Ap. 1888), Tsieh Yao-Tchuen de Tchou-hi (Extraits), by C.
de Harlez, pp. 219-271.
2 L.c., pp. 254, 255.
3 L' Instruction publique en Chine, p. 375.

212 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
was employed, and what was done with the surplus. And to obtain this
kind of information for himself he visited all parts of the country under
his government, travelling without suite, in a single carriage, taking all he
wanted with him, so that nothing was levied on his account in the towns
he passed through. Thus, " though he visited many places, nobody was
aware of it." 1
In the 1 2th century attempts were made to raise the standard of
military efficiency by examinations in the theory and practice of archery
and other warlike arts ; but the civil degrees were in the highest repute,
and in 1170 we find the minister of war complaining of the too rapid
promotion to high office of brilliant Competition Wallahs. Even Choo-hi,
it will be remembered, held a semi-military post. The Sung princes
steadily discouraged the admission of candidates to office by "protection "
or family interest, and the number of sons of officers entitled to employ
ment as such was rigorously limited. During the brief interval of peace
and splendour enjoyed by the Southern Dynasty, letters and the public
examinations were more popular than ever ; the half empire produced as
many graduates as the whole had done in its brightest days, and even
when the Mongols had invaded the provinces north of the Kiang, rather
than allow the learned of those provinces to miss the privileges of civiliza
tion, supplementary examinations were held for their benefit on the south
bank of the river.
Special edicts invited men of virtue and ability to come forward and
prove themselves worthy to save their country in a special competition, and
the title of graduate was accorded honoris causal to those who furnished corn
gratuitously to the armies, or the cultivators in districts which had suffered
from the war. This last measure, which has frequently been resorted to
by impoverished Governments, must not be understood as involving the
sale of office, only of the honorary degree equivalent to that which, if ob
tained by competition, would qualify its holder for official employment.
The Sung period is one of the most brilliant in the history of Chinese
literature, and the works belonging to it are still counted among the current
modern literature of the people. The letters of Su-tung-po to his brother,
Su-che, are read like those of Horace Walpole or Charles Lamb, while the
poems of the same writer are among the most popular in China. And at
the same time the philosophy of the age corresponded with that of ancient
sages, " like the two parts of a bucket."
According to Choo-hi, the decrees of Heaven make what is called
Nature. " That which is divided is clear and distinct ; " so the first
point is to distinguish what we mean by Nature. Nature consists of
humanity, justice, propriety, and wisdom. Humanity includes the ideas of
1 lb., p. 259. We meet this ideal again in the poem which the literary young lady
of a novel composes, in the Emperor's presence, in his praise : " When the seasons
follow the admirable order of their course, and the Son of Heaven follows the correct
path, all men forget that they owe their life to the merits of the emperor. AVhen men
forget that they owe their life to the merits of the emperor, they bestow on him the
exalted title of the unnamed Prince."

THE SCHOOLS AND THE EXAMINATIONS. 213
gentleness and peace ; justice those of fear, force, firmness and resolution ;
propriety (or the Rites) only include the conception of an external manifes
tation, which instructs and enlightens, and an external production, which
excites and animates. Wisdom consists in seeking, collecting, constructing
and forming, without material action or result. Nature is fate, but — Yang
Koui-Shan used to say — human passions are not nature.1 Ou-fang, of
Honan (a contemporary of Choo-hi), often repeated that it was well for a
man to know his own heart. As to which the Master (Choo-hi) said : " The
heart must know things, but who can know the heart? The human eye
sees other objects, but how can a man see his own eyes ? " The heart is laid
bare when the learned have revealed the secrets of reality and desires. The
nature of heaven and earth is also that of man ; there is one rule for all,
from which there is no escape even by death. Man dies, but he is not en
tirely destroyed; he possesses no special property entirely peculiar to him
self. To set up humanity as the base and standard of existence is an
"exces de liberie de lapensee" — a freethinker's extravagance. If things were
thus, one could not say that death and birth are regulated by nature and
heavenly destiny.
To be quite sure of understanding any Chinese philosopher, we should
require to have him translated into a European language by some one who
had translated Locke, Comte, or Herbert Spenser into Chinese which a
Han-lin doctor could appreciate and approve. But we are probably justi
fied in believing that behind the Emersonian sound of the above phrases
there is a kernel of hard, rational, and scientific positivism, which has more
in common with the scientific side of Spinoza's ethics than with any other
European system of philosophy.
The manufacture of pottery continued to flourish. Towards the close of
the 1 oth century, two brothers Tchang, of Tche-kiang, were famous for
vases, mostly of a pale blue, but differing from each other in the enamel
and the crackle. A whole clan of workers, bearing the name of Tseou,
under the Sung, before the division into north and south, made a brilliant
kind of white china ; and two Chus, a father and daughter, were famed in
the same period for the manufacture of curiosities in porcelain, figures of
birds, animals, etc. One of their large flower vases was worth several ounces
of silver, and the work of the daughter fetched nearly as high a price as that
of the father.2
The practice of inoculation dates from this dynasty, having been intro
duced, according to Mr. Lockhart,3 in 1014. The ordinary laws of the
country underwent little change between the Tang and the Ming. In the
13th century a curious and elaborate set of instructions to coroners
was drawn up.4 As in the present code, the person guilty of wounding
1 M. de Harlez, I.e., pp. 224, 226, 228, 242, 244, 245.
2 Histoire et fabrication de la Porcelaine Chinoise, traduit du Chinois, par S. Julien,
p. 17.
3 The Medical Missionary m China, p. 226.
4 China Review, vol. iii. p. 34. The code (sect, cexcii.) provides that, in the case of
accidental killing, or wounding, the persons causing the injury may " redeem themselves

214 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
another is held liable for all the cost of his illness and medical treatment,
and made responsible for his death, if it occurs within a prescribed interval.
But in these instructions it is further required that the accused shall himself
nurse and care for his victim ; for, it is said, the relatives, unless their
tie is of the closest, will wish the wounded man to die, that they may
extort money from his slayer, while the accused wishes him to live, that his
own punishment may be lightened. The want of affection on the part of
the relatives may, perhaps, be regarded as compensated by the absence of
malice presupposed in the assailant. The very sensible plan of imposing
on the person who has committed an act of violence the troublesome and
expensive duty of nursing the victim till he gets well, has probably done a
good deal to encourage the formation of peaceable habits in China. The
lower classes, in their quarrels, scold and gesticulate with great violence ;
but modern travellers are struck by the fact that in their utmost heat, they
always carefully stop short of touching one another— a caution which this
law may well have suggested.
With all its weaknesses and controversies, the age was one which, for
generous feeling and acute understanding, deserves a creditable place in
the world's record office. And the words, written by a captive in the hands
of Kubla, who scarcely survived his sovereign, may be taken as represent
ing the sincere belief entertained at this time by an unusual number of
highly educated statesmen : " The foundation of all that is great and good
in heaven and earth is itself born from the everlasting obligations which
are due by man to man." 1
from punishment " (which would otherwise be incurred as for the offence of killing and
wounding in an affray) " by a fine to be paid to the family of the deceased or wounded
person, which tine will, in the former instance, be applicable to the purpose of defraying
the expenses attending the burial, and in the latter to that of procuring medicines and
medical assistance." The fine is given as about £4 2s. lod., a considerable sum in
China, and recoverable, it should be noted, quite apart from any blame attaching to the
agent. One innocent person injures another : to divide the damages as equally as pos
sible, the one who does not suffer in person does so in purse.
1 Guns of Chinese Literature, p. 221. Wen Tien-Hsiang, the author of a famous
little "Meditation" containing this sentence, was put to death in 1282 a.d., having re
fused persistently to renounce his allegiance to the deposed Sung Dynasty. It was written
during his imprisonment.

CHAPTER XIX.
FOREIGN ACCOUNTS OF CHINA UNDER THE SUNG AND THE
FIRST MONGOLS.
Our notices of intercourse between China and the countries of the West
are at their scantiest during the first two centuries of the Sung Dynasty.
After 1077 a.d., "tribute "was brought almost yearly from Khotan, and
commercial and other intercourse with Corea was closer than usual, till
private commerce was put a stop to towards the close of the nth century,
at the instigation of Su-tung-po. Under the year 1200, we are told that
"no commerce was allowed but what was carried on by Government capital;"
but subsequently everything except gems was allowed to be sold in public
market, subject to a fixed duty. After the partition of the empire, the
Southern Sung were cut off from most of their northern and western tribu
taries. The eastern provinces of Yunnan and Sz'chuen seem to have been
in direct communication with India. Arab traders still frequented the
ports of Southern China, while intercourse with the Northern empire was
close enough to fix the mediaeval name of the empire.1 But private trade
could subsist through disturbances which are adverse to the presence of
scientific travellers or political embassies. Chinese authorities mention
such embassies as arriving from the Caliphate in 974 and in ion, that is,
before the power of the Khitan became dangerous ; and " the caravan of
Cathay " is referred to as a source of opulence in a remarkable Uigour
poem of the last half of the nth century.3 But it cannot be said that we
have any account worth mentioning of Northern China from independent
sources during the nth and 12th centuries.
The Arab geographer, Edrisi, writing at second-hand, about 1150, adds
nothing to the received tradition of the just and beneficent government of
China, its large population, wealthy cities, commercial activity, and skill
in arts and manufactures. Silk stuffs and porcelain are specially mentioned ;
the terminus of the western trade is placed at Hang-chow (Khan-fu), the
Yang-tse-kiang naturally being more important for the inland trade than
the Canton River. Foreigners at a distance are generally behindhand in
their history, or historical geography; and Ibn Batuta, who visited China
in the middle of the 14th century, when the country was reunited under the
Mongols, has a clearer notion of its division into the two regions of Cathay
1 Cathay is the empire of the Khitai or Khitan Tatars, who held part of Northern
China for three centuries.
2 Kudalku Bilik., tr. by H. Vambery, 1870. 235

216 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
and Manzi than Edrisi, who wrote when the power of the Northern and
the Southern empires was most nearly equal.
A Franciscan friar, known as John of Piano Carpini, is the first European
who gives us any information about the Mongol empire in Northern China ;
and he, though distinguishing the Tatars from the Cathayans, clearly does
not know of any difference between the Cathayans recently conquered by
Genghis Khan and the Chinese. What he says of the people of the coun
try clearly applies to the latter. " They seem to be kindly and polished
folks enough. They have no beard, and in character of countenance have
a considerable resemblance to the Mongols, but are not so broad in the
face. They have a language of their own " (and a written character, as he
has already observed). " Their betters as craftsmen, in every art practised
by man, are not to be found in the whole world. Their country is very
rich in corn, in wine, gold, silver, silk, and in every kind of produce that
tends to the support of mankind." i
A few years later Rubruk, a Flemish friar, describes the Cathayans as
" little fellows, speaking much through their nose, and, as is general with
all those Eastern people, their eyes are very narrow. . . . It has always
been their custom that the son must follow the father's craft. . . .
They are first-rate artists in every kind of craft, and their physicians have a
thorough knowledge of the virtues of herbs, and an admirable skill in diag
nosis by the pulse. . . . They have no wine in Cathay, but make their
drink of rice. . . . The common money of Cathay consists of pieces
of cotton paper about a palm in length and breadth, upon which certain
lines are printed, resembling the seal of Mango Khan. They do their
writing with a pencil such as painters paint with, and a single character of
theirs comprehends several letters so as to form a whole word." 2 The last
remark proves that Rubruk was an intelligent, as well as an observant,
traveller ; and as he did not proceed beyond Karakorum, his account of so
many thoroughly Chinese traits shows how far, and how thoroughly, Chinese
civilization had already spread.
About the same time as Friar John, an Armenian prince, Hayton, was
sent to make terms for his brother with the Tatars, and in the beginning
of the next century, a monk of the same royal house embodied in a geo
graphical work some of the traveller's experiences. According to this writer,
the people of Cathay "are exceedingly full of shrewdness and sagacity, and
hold in contempt the performances of other nations in every kind of art
and science. They have indeed a saying to the effect that they alone see
with two eyes, whilst the Latins see with one, and all other nations are
blind ! . . . And, in good sooth, there is such a vast variety of
articles of marvellous and unspeakable delicacy and elaboration of work
manship brought from those parts, that there is really no other people that
can be compared with them in such matters." The essentially secular
character of their civilization has not escaped the good monk, who con
tinues : " Though these people have the acutest intelligence in all matters
1 Cathay, and the Way thither, i. cxxiv. - lb., cxxv.-vii.

UNDER THE SUNG AND THE FIRST MONGOLS. 217
wherein material things are concerned, yet you shall never find among
them any knowledge or perception of spiritual things."1
Abulfeda, who flourished between 1273 and 1331, complains of the
rarity of travellers from these remote parts, and adds nothing to the reports
of earlier writers, except that the Tatars had destroyed the walls of
Zayton, which is identified with Chin-chow, and described by all mediaeval
travellers as nearly or quite the most wonderful port of commerce in the
world. Ibn Khordadbeh, however, gave the preference to Hang-chow,
and makes especial mention of the fresh-water lake to the north of the
town, and the wells which supply the town with water, as if these
achievements of Su-che were among the chief attractions of the great
city. Following the chronology of Sir Henry Yule, Marco Polo, with his
father and uncle, reached the court of Kubla in 1285. His position in
China was not unlike that of the Jesuit missionaries in the reign of the
emperor, best known as Kang-hi. He was in the service of a foreign
monarch, and looked at China and the Chinese from the conqueror's point
of view ; unlike the Jesuits, he does not seem even to have understood the
Chinese language, at least not so as to read or write it, and hence he is un
able to distinguish between Chinese and Tatar customs, where they .overlap.
Thus he describes the people of Tangut, the former kingdom of Hia,
which included part of the modern province of Kansu, as burning paper
copies of money, houses, etc., at funerals, using elaborate air-tight and
varnished coffiDS, and arranging posthumous betrothals between children
or young persons who have died unmarried, all which are purely Chinese
traits, and must have been borrowed by the Tanguts, just as the Khitan
and the Kin adopted the manners and customs of their subjects. Similarly
in a passage given from Ramusio,2 after describing the three staple food
crops, rice, panic, and millet, which all " render an hundred fold," and the
industry of the people, which leaves no spot of arable land untilled, the
author, in the same breath, dwells on the fruitfulness of the cattle by which,
'¦ when they take the field, every man is followed by six, eight, or more
horses for his own use," though this would apply to the Mongols only, and
is quite out of place in an explanation of how the country of Cathay sup
ports its vast population.
The description of the functions of an officer whom Marco calls " The
keeper of lost property," at once recalls the provisions on this subject of
the Chow Li ; but if the Mongols borrowed this institution from the Chinese,
they must have attached particular value to it, as it is described as prevail
ing at the Perso-Mongol court as well ; and it should more probably be
regarded as a common inheritance of all branches of the Tatar stock.
According to the Chow Li,3 found property must be declared at once to the
provost of the market, who takes charge of it for ten days, and then appro
priates it, things of small value being given to the finder, while those of
1 Cathay, and the Way thither, i. cxcv. 2 Yule, i. p. 392.
3 Biot, ii. p. 349.

218 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
great value fall to the State. According to Marco Polo, the finder of any
article, sword, horse, hawk, or whatsoever else, without a known owner, is
bound to bring it at once to the keeper, or is liable to punishment. This
officer's tent is pitched in a conspicuous place, with banner displayed, so
that both those who have lost and those who have found anything may
know where to find him.1
The exact direction of Marco Polo's journeys within the borders of
China is not of much importance for our purpose. The extent of his
facilities for observing the general condition of the country are sufficiently
indicated when we know him to have travelled between Peking and Pin-
yang, Pin-yang and Si-gnan-fu, Si-gnan-fu and Ching-tu-fu, Ching-tu-fu and
Yunnan (to say nothing of Yunnan and Burmah) ; and then again between
Peking and Tsinan, along the Grand Canal to the Yellow River, which, at
its junction with the Hwai, then marked the eastern boundary between
Northern China and Polo's Manzi ; further along the canal to Yang-chow,
of which city Polo was for three years governor, to Su-chow and Hang-
chow, the two jewels in the southern crown of which it was said, " Heaven
is above, but Su and Hang are here below ; '' thence by land and water
into Fokien, to its two great ports, Foo-chow and Zayton, while on some
other occasion he certainly proceeded up the Kiang as far as Ngan-
king, and probably thence to Woo-chang, and by the Flan River to Siang-
yang, though this point may also have been reached from Si-gnan-fu.
Whether the diagonal of the primitive Chinese empire was thus traversed
or not, Marco Polo certainly saw with his own eyes all that lay along the
two principal lines of traffic from north to south, through the western and
the eastern provinces.
Except in the remote south-west, where cowries and salt were used for
money (as the latter is still in the same regions), and where gold was to be
bought from unsuspicious natives for only five times the price of silver, the
traveller's descriptions show us everywhere Chinese civilization flourishing
in substantially the same manner and degree throughout the empire.
Special products, such as rhubarb, asbestos, coal, ginger, musk, grass-cloth,
camphor, bamboos, sugar, and the like, are mentioned in their place ; the
omission of any notice of tea probably indicates that the Mongols had not
yet acquired a taste for that beverage, and remained faithful to the spiced
rice wine, which Marco thought " makes better drink than any other kind
of wine," with the incidental advantage of also producing drunkenness
sooner than any other.
The face of the country between such great landmarks as mountains,
rivers, and cities of capital importance, is described in recurring phrases
which recall those of the Mahomedan travellers four centuries before:
1 These regulations speak more strongly for the anxious care of the rulers than the
scrupulous honesty of the governed ; and, in fact, the readiness of Chinese converts to
return found property unsolicited was reckoned to their credit as a positive virtue. The
Lettres Edijiantes tell of a poor couple who restored some money to its owner, and de
clined a reward ; and this act of virtue was considered worthy of being reported to the
Emperor, who honoured it by a special proclamation.

UNDER THE SUNG AND THE FIRST MONGOLS. 219
"fine districts, with plenty of towns and boroughs, all enjoying much trade,
and practising various forms of industry ; " " excellent hostelries for
travellers, with fine vineyards, fields and gardens, and springs of water ; "
" many cities and walled towns, and many merchants, too, therein ; "
" cities and boroughs abounding in trade and industry, and quantities of
beautiful trees and gardens, and fine plains planted with mulberries, which
are the trees on the leaves of which the silkworms do feed . . . also
plenty of game of all sorts, both of beasts and birds ; " "a succession of
cities and boroughs, and beautiful plains, inhabited by people who live by
trade and industry, and have great plenty of silver." Then follow " great
mountains and valleys," with towns and villages, and people who " live by
tilling the earth, and hunting in the great woods ; " or, to give Marco's
favourite formula at length, " You meet everywhere with fine towns and
villages, the people of which are all idolaters,1 and burn their dead, and
are subject to the great Kaan, and have paper money, and live by trade
and handicrafts, and have all the necessaries of life in great abundance."
To the foreigner, this teeming population, all devoted to the arts of
peace, appears as a triumph of civilization. It is the native sage who,
having beheld the fall of Governments, while the fruitful earth nourishes
men so crowded together that their shoulders touch, their sleeves sweep
one against the other, and three young children might hardly find a vacant
corner whereon to stand upright,3 — it is he who, looking back upon the
past, finds little comfort in the thought that, "... the individual
withers, and the world is more and more." As if remembering or divining
the clear inspiration which the fathers of his race drew from the unclouded
visage of the Sun God, Ma-twan-lin surmises that as the climate became
denser, the sons of those born under happier influences lost capacity,
wisdom degenerated, scholars blushed to bear arms, labourers, with no
thought above the plough, were ignorant of both war and letters ; and thus
the growing population gave no real accession of strength to the State ; the
people were many, but without worth or virtue ; they had become good for
nothing but to pay taxes, and with taxes they were overwhelmed ; the State
no longer found a protection in the people, and the people cursed their
lives beneath the oppression of their rulers ! If we let these two pictures
supplement each other, it becomes obvious that China, in the 13th
century, had reached that point of material civilization which has never yet
been attained without attendant materials for moral and intellectual
discontent. Marco Polo saw as little of the misery caused by oppressive tax-
gatherers, debased assignats, and an alien Government, as pleasure tourists
in the Western world see of the effects of a commercial crisis or the low
standard of comfort reached by. the labouring classes. But Chinese
1 I.e. Buddhists. Buddhist priests are still burnt instead of buried, and as the Mongols
were zealous Buddhists, Marco Polo may have mistaken their rites for the general
national usage. The Chinese seem always as now to have buried their dead, and to have
been superstitiously particular about the choice of a burial ground.
2 Ma-twan-lin, tr. by Klaproth, Nouveau Journ. As., vol. x. p. 16,

220 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
writers compared one historical experience of their own country with
another ; and the very fact that the period when China appeared so pros
perous to the Venetian, is not, by comparison, reckoned among the most
fortunate times of Chinese history, goes to prove that there had been
reigns when China felt herself as prosperous as she seemed to Marco.
Of the people themselves he gives the same account as all earlier and
later travellers : They " have an ornate style of speech ; they salute each
other with a cheerful1 countenance, and with great politeness; they behave
like gentlemen, and eat with great propriety. They show great respect to
their parents." They are " men of peaceful character . . . you hear
of no feuds or noisy quarrels, or dissensions of any kind among them.
Both in their commercial dealings and in their manufactures, they are
thoroughly honest and truthful, and there is such a degree of good-will and
neighbourly attachment among both men and women, that you would take
the people who live in the same street to be all of one family." They treat
their women with the greatest respect. " They also treat the foreigners
who visit them for the sake of trade with great cordiality, and entertain
them in the most winning manner, affording them every help and advice
in their business."2
The European standard of cleanliness was not high in the Middle Ages, so
we need not suppose Chinese manners to have changed for the worse since
their love of hot baths led our traveller to describe them as " very cleanly
in their persons."3 Gay water parties and picnics were the favourite amuse
ment; and if sometimes, as foreshadowed in the ancient odes of Wei, these
expeditions were not undertaken in company such as a classical moralist
could approve, there was at least a varnish of literary polish thrown over
even disreputable liaisons. The Aspasias of the period were well educated,
and several plays of the Yuen Dynasty were written by literary comediennes,
who by law and custom belonged to this class. The virtuous courtesan
was a rather favourite heroine with the dramatists, and one plot turns upon
her right, under an ancient law, to be allowed to marry lawfully a respect
able citizen, as a reward for having dutifully cherished and maintained her
mother till the latter's death.
It is not necessary to transcribe Marco Polo's detailed description of the
magnificence of the two capitals of Cambaluc (Khanbalig or Peking), and
Kinsay (Kingsse=: capital), now Hang-chu-fu, or the Imperial Palaces of
either. The description of Kinsay is derived in part from a memorial sent
by the empress of the defeated Sung Dynasty to Kubla, to entreat him to
spare the town and its inhabitants. A Chinese official document is there-
1 To " look pleased " on appropriate occasions is a social duty inculcated in the Rites
and elsewhere. (Yule, i. p. 405.)
2 lb., ii. p. 161.
3 " At the present day, the Chinese section of an American emigrant train is the most
free from unpleasant animal odours, and its inmates are much more scrupulous in the
matter of ablutions than the Caucasians." (Robert Louis Stevenson, Across the t tains,
p. 63.) Apparently the modern Chinese wash superficially with hot water, but allow
one cloth to serve as sponge and towel for a whole company, whence the discordant
estimates of observers accustomed to less or greater fastidiousness.

UNDER THE SUNG AND THE FIRST MONGOLS. 221
fore responsible for the statement that " there were in the city twelve guilds
of the different crafts, and that each guild had 12,000 houses in the occupa
tion of its workmen. Each of these houses, it was said, contains at least
twelve men, while some contain twenty and some forty, not that these are
all masters, but inclusive of the journeymen who work under the masters." 1
These are obviously round numbers corresponding, perhaps, to the classi
fication of the dwellings paying house-tax ; the " 10,000 bridges " mentioned
by Marco, much to the distress of his editors and commentators, is only a
fresh proof of his ignorance of the language, since kwan ("ten thousand ")
is only Chinese for " ever so many."
The number of " fires " or households given by the traveller is 1,600,000,
which at five persons to a family gives the enormous population of 8,000,000,
figures almost equally difficult to accept and to reject, when accompanied
by a perfectly correct account of the manner in which the census returns
are obtained, from the list of inmates which each householder was obliged
to exhibit on his doorway. The most probable explanation of the eight
millions is, that thegovernment of the town included a considerable suburban
area of which the population was included in the district. Marco does
not profess to give the population of Peking in the same way, but early in
the next century 2 we find the emperor giving presents of silk to 2,331 old
men of ninety and upwards, and to 8,331 of between eighty and ninety.
According to modern experience, the number of the first class, who got a
double portion of silk, is out of all proportion to the octogenarians ; but sup
posing all the 10,662 to be really over eighty, that number is about one-fifth
of the men of corresponding ages shown in the census of 1881 for England
and Wales ; and if the proportion of such seniors were the same in the two
cases, this would give a population of some five millions for Peking — a not
impossible proportion, at all events, between the two capitals. Most prob
ably in both cases the numbers refer to the districts of which the capital
was the administrative centre, not to the town alone.
According to M. Pauthier's Chinese authorities, the administrative
province of Che-kiang included thirty circuits, and in 1290 the circuit of
Hang-chow alone (presumably the area enclosed by the city walls) had a
recorded population of 360,850 householders, and 1,834,719 persons of
all ages. Hang-chow was likely, as the Sung capital, to have reached
dimensions unequalled by any single town of modern China ; it was the
centre of domestic trade, like Canton ; of foreign trade, like Shanghai ; and
of government, like Peking; so Ser Marco's millions must have had at
least a colourable foundation in fact.
The fiction, by which the emperor was supposed to have a monoply of
the goods brought by foreign traders, was still kept up in a way ; but in
the case of the Southern capital, which was also a great seaport, the rights
of the Crown evidently tended more and more to be compounded for
harbour and custom duties, amounting to 10 per cent, on most foreign mer-
1 Yule, ii. p. 146. ' De Mailla, ix. p. 506.

222 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
chandise. Then, as now, the empire considered itself responsible for the
safe keeping, as well as the good behaviour, of the foreign visitors. In
Peking different inns were assigned for the use of travellers of different
speech or nation, and throughout China the hotel-keepers were required
to report to the officials the names and destination of their guests. This
sort of police supervision was, and is, intended rather for the protection of
travellers against the dangers of the road, than for the detection of evil-
disposed conspirators against the public peace.
The regulations of the inns were founded on those for the regulation of
the Government post-houses, which in their turn were a portion of the
system of the public roads and posts. According to Marco, station houses,
fit for the reception of a king, were to be found at intervals of twenty-five
miles on all the principal highways leading to the various provinces; and
even in the least inhabited parts, the stations were not more than thirty-
five to forty-five miles apart. The existence of highways, with shelters at
stated intervals for tribute-bearers and Government couriers, dates from the
days of the three first dynasties : Yu having provided the roads, and the
Chow Li, at latest, the regulations. But we seem to see traces of Wang-
ngan-shi's " Law for the protection of horses," in Marco's assurance that
all these stations, with their 200 or 400 horses ready for the use of mes
sengers, " cost the emperor nothing at all." According to him, each city,
village, or hamlet, is required to provide the horses for the nearest post
station, half of which are always out at grass, and half ready for use.
The Mongol demand for horses was naturally larger than that of the
native rulers ; and fourteen great centres — in Corea, Yunnan, Karakorum,
and other suitable districts — were kept up to supply horses for the army.
And whatever traces could be found, in the old laws, of the Emperor's -
right to have his horses maintained at the public expense, were sure to be
revived and made the most of, to the great disgust of the Chinese, who
objected to the charge of the Government horses, even when nominally
paid for it. The disuse of horses and wheeled carriages in the 16th century,
which has generally been attributed to the increase of population and the
neglect of the roads, may have begun with a reaction, under the Ming
Dynasty, against this kind of oppression.
The activity of the postal department in Kubla's day may be estimated
from the circumstance, parenthetically recorded by Marco, that a gravelled
bridle road had to be kept for the couriers by the side of the paved high
ways, which in the low-lying parts of Southern China were necessary to
avoid mud and bog. He also ascribes to Kubla the planting of fine
avenues of trees along the course of the high roads, a good work in which
he was encouraged by the dictum of his religious advisers that " he who
plants trees lives long." Marco's description of the city watch or night
police is very like that given by Davis, 500 years later, though the latter
makes a gratuitous mistake in supposing its strictness to be the expression
of a despot's fears for his own safety. The existence of fireproof towers for
the storage of valuables, and the need for them arising from the frequent

UNDER THE SUNG AND THE FIRST MONGOLS. 223
conflagrations which spread through the streets of wooden houses, are also
mentioned. The traveller's general impression of the abundance and cheapness of
all the necessaries of life, sometimes makes way for a more particular
admiration, as of pheasants at a penny apiece, or the " delicate living "
evidenced by eating flesh and fish at the same meal. Marco Polo does
not exactly give his authority to the description by Mandeville1 of the
"gode custome" in Jamchay of the great Chan, whereby innkeepers
supply diners a domicile, at so much a head, to persons wishing to entertain
their friends without trouble; but his description of a pavilion on the lake
Si-hou, where glass, china, linen, and service are supplied to picnic parties,
points to something of the same kind ; and, in fact, it is probable that in
the material refinements of crowded civilized life, China had even then
forestalled most of the inventions of the West ; — from the printing of books
and bank notes to the building of boats with water-tight compartments ;
and from the hotel-keeper's notice that he will not be responsible for pro
perty left in the traveller's room, unless the door is locked, and the key
handed in at the bureau, to the bad custom by which young men pay
money to be allowed to serve as waiters in fashionable restaurants, where
fees are numerous and large.
Marco Polo's account of the public granaries, and the liberalities of the
great Kaan is all the more interesting, as a confirmation of the Chinese
authorities, from his being obviously unaware that what Kubla did was no
more than every well-disposed Chinese sovereign was expected to do under
penalty of historical obloquy. Moreover, Marco, as a foreigner, would not
have cheated himself, as interested officials might, with the assumption that
the correct thing was being done, when there were no visible signs of the
doing. His opportunities of knowing were so much better, and his de
scription is so much more detailed than that of the Mahomedans of the
9th century, that it may be quoted in full as the first European account of
usages, then some 3,000 years old.
" N6w you must know that the emperor sends his messengers over all
his lands and kingdoms and provinces, to ascertain from his officers if
the people are afflicted by any dearth through unfavourable seasons, or
storms, or locusts, or other like calamity, and from those who have suffered
in this way, no taxes are exacted for that year : nay more, he causes them
to be supplied with corn of his own for food and seed. . . . And when
winter comes, he causes inquiry to be made as to those who have lost
their cattle, whether by murrain or other mishap, and such persons not
only go scot free, but get presents of cattle. And thus, as I tell you, the
lord every year helps and fosters the people subject to him."
After a short digression about the wayside trees, rice wine, and the
"black stones " used for fuel, he continues :—
" You must know that when the emperor sees that corn is cheap and
abundant, he buys up large quantities and has it stored up in all his pro-
1 After Odoric of Pordenone.

224 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
vinces in great granaries, where it is so well looked after, that it will keep
for three or four years. And this applies, let me tell you, to all kinds of
corn, whether wheat, barley, millet, rice, panic, or what not, and when
there is any scarcity of any particular kind of corn, he causes that to be
issued. And if the price of the corn is at one bezant the measure, he
lets them have it at a bezant for four measures, or at whatever price
will produce general cheapness ; and every one can have food in this way.
And by this providence of the emperor's, his people can never suffer from
dearth. He does the same over his whole empire ; causing these supplies
to be stored everywhere, according to the calculation of the wants and
necessities of the people." 1
A passage found only in the Ramusian text of Marco Polo's travels
(which, as Sir Henry Yule ingeniously suggests, may perhaps embody sup
plementary notes, written by Marco's uncle) describes a rather cheap form
of charity practised by Kubla, which consisted in giving clothes to the
poor and to mendicant monks, the materials for which were obtained by
a tax, while the labour of making them up was provided by an onerous
corvee, as all artisans were bound to give a day's labour weekly. He
makes no mention of the very enlightened Mongol institution of free dis
pensaries, established in 1237, during the reign of Ogatai, at the sugges
tion, we may be sure, of his temperance-preaching, -rhubarb-collecting
minister, Yeliu-tchoutsai.2 In connection with the exposure of new-born
infants, of which Marco Polo speaks in Southern China, he mentions the
orphan asylums, maintained by the Sung emperors, and the applications
made to them by childless rich men wishing to adopt an heir ; those not
thus provided for were married to one another, and started in life at the
emperor's expense, as many as 20,000 boys and girls being thus provided
for every year.
The greatest original work of Kubla's reign — the construction of the
Grand Canal — is an example of the strength and weakness of the early
Mongol Government. The conception is statesmanlike and magnificent ;
the Suez Canal is probably the only similar work of equal magnitude that
has so thoroughly subserved the purpose for which it was undertaken, and
Kubla's object was as legitimate as his means were well chosen. Kiang-
nan, the district south of the lower part of the Kiang River, was the natural
granary of the empire ; the court, the capital, the army, and the civil ser
vice in the North, all depended for their food supply on this province.
Before the canal, the only through cheap transport had been by the ex
posed sea passage along the coast. The canal brought Kingsse and
Khanbahg within forty days' easy navigation of each other, and gave to all
the intervening provinces the boon of a navigable river exactly along
the main line of natural traffic. In the year after the canal was opened
in 1289, i| millions of rice measures were received in this province for
transport to Peking.
Marco describes, and, as we have seen, travelled by this "water commu-
1 Yule, i. pp. 393, 396. 2 Cf., however Tcheou li, i. pp. 92-7.

UNDER THE SUNG AND THE FIRST MONGOLS. 225.
nication in the shape of a wide and deep channel dug between stream and
stream, between lake and lake, forming as it were a great river on which
large vessels can ply ; " and he must have been actively concerned in the
grain transport service, as the city of which he was three years Governor is-
the centre where most of the provincial stores would be delivered. But
he was not enough behind the scenes to realize the cost of these great
works when not executed under the vigilant eyes of paternal native admini
strators. The official annals of the dynasty describe this and other canal
works, as executed by the forced labour of millions, " of whom the majority
perished;" l and it is obvious that even roads and waterways are a doubtful
boon when their chief use is to transport the armies, or the increased taxes
required to maintain the armies, of an alien conqueror.
No stronger proof of the candour of the Chinese historians can be given
than the character which they give of Kubla. They praise his ability, his
love of letters, his humanity, and give him credit for a sincere zeal for the
welfare of his subjects. They complain that no native Chinese were em
ployed in offices of trust or importance, but they admit that his foreign
ministers were chosen with discernment, except in the all-important case of
the Minister of Finance. The sight of a wealthy natioti was new to the
Arabs and other Mahomedans of Western Asia, and they naturally thought
to " squeeze " the whole population, as rich merchants were squeezed with
impunity by every Commander of the Faithful. Ogatai was tempted by a
financier of this school, and Kubla himself was ill served by one Ahmed
(Marco's Achmath, the Ahama of the Annals), whose insolence and extor
tions provoked a conspiracy among the Chinese, by whom he was assassi
nated. The Emperor was absent at the time, and on his return applied to one
Polo, an assessor of the Privy Council, to enlighten him as to the cause of
the murder. Fortunately the Venetian rejoices in one of the very few
European names that can appear unaltered in Chinese ; and there is not
the slightest reason to doubt that it was either Marco, or some member of
his family, who then deserved the praise of history, by the courage and
firmness with which he described the villainies of the dead minister,2 whose
wealth was confiscated while the memory of his executioners was rehabilitated
and honoured. He and other Mongol ministers of finance are accused of
having profited by the theoretical right of the Emperor, to a monopoly of
foreign merchandise, to plunder the merchants, whom it had been the
fashion of Chinese monarchs to patronize and enrich.
Marco's account of these transactions, in their legitimate form, is associ
ated with his description of the paper currency, and is worth quoting at
length, because, while denying the existence of oppression, he expressly
indicates the point where it might be expected to begin. "All merchants
1 Pauthier's Marco Polo, p. 481 n. The comparative inefficiency of the canal at the
present day is due to changes in the course of the rivers feeding it, as well as to neglect
of dredging and other necessary works.
2 De Mailla, ix. p. 413.
VOL. II. — P.C. Q

226 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
arriving from India or other countries, and bringing with them gold or silver
or gems and pearls, are prohibited from selling to any one but the Emperor.
He has twelve experts chosen for this business, men of shrewdness and
experience in such affairs : these appraise the articles,1 and the emperor
then pays a liberal price for them in those pieces of paper. The
merchants accept his price readily, for in the first place they would not
get so good an one from any one else, and secondly they are paid without
any delay. And with this paper money they can buy what they like any
where over the empire, whilst it is also vastly lighter to carry about on their
journeys. And it is a truth that the merchants will several times in the
year bring wares to the amount of 400,000 bezants, and the Grand Sire
pays for all that in paper. . . . So he buys such a quantity of those
precious things every year that his treasure is endless, whilst all the time
the money he pays away costs nothing at all. Moreover, several times in
the year proclamation is made through the city that any one who may have
gold, or silver, or gems, or pearls, by taking them to the Mint, shall get a
handsome price for them. . . . Thus the quantity they bring in is
marvellous, though those who do not choose to do so may let it alone.
Still in this way, nearly all the valuables in the country come into the
Kaan's possession. . . . And if any Baron, or any one else soever
hath need of gold, or silver, or gems, or pearls, in order to make plate or
girdles or the like, he goes to the Mint and buys as much as he lists, paying
in this paper money."
Marco is not able to assure us that the paper money is taken at the
same valuation in the two cases ; but we have seen that a limited amount
of paper was readily accepted by private dealers because of its con
venience in use. The enormous amount of paper issued by the Mongols,
amounting in the 34 years of Kubla's reign to little less than ^125,000,000
sterling in nominal value, can obviously not have been in circulation
except at a much depreciated rate. Yet we may believe Marco that
the notes were taken readily in exchange for goods at the current rate,
whatever that might be. The uncertainty which attaches to Marco's
rendering of Chinese money values makes it impossible to use his infor
mation as to the revenue drawn from Hang-chow and the surrounding
provinces, with any confidence. He puts this at 14,700,000 saggi of gold,
which Sir Henry Yule's estimate of the Venetian saggio makes equivalent
to over 9 j millions sterling, for only one, albeit the richest of the
provinces of the empire.
If we had for this period tables like those which show the total revenue
under different heads under the Sung emperors, we should have a clue to
the needful deductions ; but honest book-keeping is too great a check on
fraud for finance ministers of this period to have followed such prece
dents, and less than half a century after our traveller's report, Chinese
annalists found it impossible to recover materials for the usual summary.
The simplest explanation of the great apparent inflation of the revenue is
1 Cf. Ta-Tsing-lu-li, Stanton's translation, sect, cliii.

UNDER THE SUNG AND THE FIRST MONGOLS. 227
to suppose that Marco gives it in paper money without allowance for de
preciation.1 The presence of Mahomedan money-lenders gave rise to a grievance in
Northern China which illustrates the fatal results of a mixture of the insti
tutions characteristic of nations of a totally different type. Not un
naturally, in a newly conquered country, cases of brigandage arose ; and
by Chinese custom the fine for that offence was levied on the district
where it was committed, according to the ancient rule of " mutual responsi
bility.'' It was now complained that the local magistrates had to borrow
the money for these fines from Mahomedan usurers who doubled the
sum by usurious interest, and then insisted on selling up their insolvent
clients. The evil reached such dimensions that Yeliu-tache persuaded
the emperor to pay off the usurers with 760,000 ounces of silver, which,
however, of course came ultimately from the pockets of the conquered
people. The land tax was heavier under Kubla than it had been under Ogatai,
and besides this a number of special taxes were levied, not, as heretofore,
upon special sources of profit, but merely to meet particular items of ex
pense, as a tax for the public examinations, a tax for the medical dispen
saries, for the granaries, and even a tax for the relief of distress. As some
of all these monies unquestionably stuck to the fingers of the tax-collectors;
we need not wonder that the Mongols had a shorter tenure of power than
any other dynasty founded by soldiers and administrators of such eminence
as Genghis, Ogatai, and Kubla.
The fall of Ahmed took place in 1282 ; but only three years later, before
the departure of Marco Polo, similar complaints began to be made of a
successor and former prote'ge' of his, who was accused of reviving the same
malpractices, under cover of elaborate regulations not unlike those of
Wang-ngan-shi. This minister proposed to coin copper money, which was
to be issued to the inhabitants of the southern trading ports, for exchange
against foreign merchandise, subject to a charge of seven-tenths of the profits
thus made, which was to be paid to the imperial treasury. The rich, who
apparently profited by the scarcity of metal to sell weapons at a fancy
price, were forbidden to engage in that manufacture, and the profits to
be derived from it by the State were ordered to be spent in replenishing
the granaries, so that corn and rice should be sold at moderate prices.
The tax on wine was raised, and wine-sellers' licenses put up to auction.
It was a part of the plan to farm out the charge of the imperial stables
and cattle to Mongols, in return for payments equal to one-fifth of the
breeder's profits, and the trade between China and the steppes was in the
same way to be retained in the hands of the Government. But the at
tempt at once to multiply and to monopolize the opportunities of cor
ruption raised a storm of enmity against the ingenious financier, and he
1 The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels
of the East, newly translated and edited with notes by Col. (the late Sir) Henry Yule, i.
PP- 3793 380.

228 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
was finally condemned to be cut in pieces, by the tribunal before which he
was accused of fraudulently enhancing the tea duties.
The effect on the condition of the people of such fiscal abuses, which
escaped detection except in cases of special enormity, is seen in the
results of the census in 1290, when the returns showed only 13,196,206
tax-paying families, or a total population of 58,834,711 persons, exclusive,
it is stated, of the large number of rebels and others, who had taken
refuge upon the lakes or in the mountains. It had been the intention of
Kubla to reduce the amount of taxation to what had been exacted during
the Sung Dynasty ; now, however, the increased number and expensive-
ness of the imperial family compelled the abandonment of this design,
and the utmost that could be conceded was immunity from further
burdens. Then, as always, the lawful demands of the tax-collectors
formed the least part of the sums exacted, and in 1293 the number of
bureaux and revenue officials was largely reduced, as a means of relief even
more practical than a nominal reduction of taxation.

CHAPTER XX.
THE MONGOLS AFTER KUBLA.
Kubla Khan did not long survive the departure of the Venetian travellers
to whom he is indebted for so much of his fame. The Polo family
started on their return to Venice in 1292, and in 1294 Kubla was suc
ceeded by his grandson Timour, known in Chinese annals as Tching-
tsong. An edict of his first year mentions the allowances of grain made
at the public expense, for the support of students in the State colleges.
The insufficiency of the revenue was lamented, and attributed partly to
defective receipts, owing to the exemption of Buddhist and Taoist priests
from taxation, which caused laymen to adopt the dress ; and partly to the
cost of pensions granted to members of the imperial family.
While the Mongol Government 1jius complained of the unprofitable
ness of its empire, the rich provinces in Southern China had, during the
forty years of peace after the Mongol conquest, recovered much of their
former wealth and splendour. So long as the revenue returns sufficed for
the wants of the administration, the condition of the subject population
received little further attention. And, under cover of this indifference,
while the number of brigands, vagabonds, and refugees had multiplied,
so as to cause a serious falling off in the roll of tax-payers, the great families
in Kiang-nan had become so rich as to own as serfs more than " ten
thousand" subject households. In 1309 the increase of such agglome-
rators was denounced, on the score of the political danger to the dynasty
likely to arise, when subjects of alien race attained such a degree of
power and opulence.
To check the aggrandizement of these large landowners, they were re
quired to furnish an exact return of their property, and each family with
a revenue exceeding 50,000 measures of grain was required to pay a tax
of 10,000 measures, half of which was allotted to the support of the
troops, and half to the public granaries. Odoric of Pordenone describes
the revenue of a fabulously rich and luxurious citizen as amounting to
300,000 sacks of rice, and the figure may be accepted as representing the
contemporary idea of wealth a la Monte Crista. Besides the above
substantial income tax (equivalent to *\s. in the pound), the same families
were required to send one son as a sort of hostage, to serve in the Mongol
armies. In 1313 the literary examinations were restored, and the Chinese
admitted in greater numbers to a share in the administration. As a further

230 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
measure of conciliation, new honours were conferred on Confucius, and
the tablets of all the great orthodox authors of the Sung Dynasty were
finally ordered to be hung up in his temple. Sumptuary regulations were
also introduced, distinguishing the dress of officials and literati from that
of the common people — a measure which may have been connected with
these other attempts to obliterate the sharp distinction between Mongols
and Chinese. In pursuance of the same policy we find the Tribunal of
public Works presenting a Treatise on the Cultivation of mulberries to the
Emperor in 1318, and two years later the official code of the dynasty was
promulgated, in 2,539 articles. In the same year the young Emperor was
assassinated, and throughout the next half-century few years pass without
some complaints of dynastic rivalries, Mongol malversations, and Chinese
seditions, interspersed with abortive attempts at reform and repression.
In 1323 a Chinese minister denounced the trade in precious stones,
which dealers were compelled to purchase from the court at ten times
their real value, and the pearl fishery at Canton, to which many lives were
sacrificed every year ; and he gave voice once more to the classic Chinese
horror of the undue influence at court of women, eunuchs, and the minis
ters of strange religions. Wu-tching, the president of the Han-lin College,
was actually invited to write a preface to the edition of Buddhist works,
written in letters of gold, on which nearly 4,000 ounces of the precious
metal had been spent ; and, though he refused to do so, the request itself
shows how wide was the gulf between the ruler and his most independent
subjects.1 The relation between the Yuen emperors and the literati never became
really cordial, and the introduction of Mongols into the Han-lin College
did not prevent that body from offering an effective passive resistance, when
it was required to prepare a collection of Mongol customs corresponding
to those published by the Tang and Sung Dynasties. To conciliate one
nation was to offend the other, and, after more short reigns and threat
ened rebellions, in 1337 there seems to have been a reaction among the
Mongol magnates, jealous of the Chinese, who in their turn declared that
all the existing discontent arose from the avarice and corruption of the
Mongols employed in the chief offices of State. The political ineptitude
of the ruling faction may be gauged from the fact that the Chinese were
now forbidden to keep horses or learn Mongol.
The founder of the Ming Dynasty was born about this time ; he entered
a Buddhist monastery at the age of seventeen, but soon abandoned the
religious life, and in 1352 enlisted under one of the many partisan leaders
whose bands turned all China into a battlefield. At the same time great
and lasting discontent was provoked by the labours exacted in order to
divert the course of the Hoang-ho into one of its deserted beds. The
works failed to remedy the inundations complained of; but 70,000 work
men at a time were employed, the number of brigands and rebels increased
as the reluctant cultivators deserted, and the bands of malcontents were
1 Le sihledes Youen, by T. Bazin, p. 467.

THE MONGOLS AFTER KUBLA. 231
further recruited by the colonies of peasants whom the Government had
forcibly transplanted from their own lands. Fleets of pirates commanded
the sea, and famine, pestilence and rapine raged inland, as in the miserable
turmoil of the Posterior dynasties : human flesh was eaten. The familiar
chapter of history was to repeat itself, a righteous deliverer needed but to
appear for the Appointment of Heaven to give the empire into his hands.
Dynastic rivalries hastened the ruin of the alien house, and in 1368, only
89 years after the fall of the Southern Sung, the Mongol Dynasty in its
turn became extinct.
It is from Chinese sources only that we learn to regard this 14th century
among the iron ages of the long history of the black-haired race. To
Europeans contemporary with the Hundred Years War, the peace and
plenty of China at its worst provided food enough for admiration ; and, as
it happens, the number of our Western authorities is just at this time in
creased by that very relaxation of the bonds of orthodoxy, against which
native critics protested in vain. It was under cover of the Buddhist zeal
of the Mongol princes that the Latin friars of the 14th century established
their missions, even while denouncing the latitudinarianism by which they
profited. A somewhat fiery bishop Andrew of Zayton1 observes, in 1326,
that there are persons of every nation and sect in the empire, all allowed
to live freely according to their own creed, owing to the erroneous belief
of the people " that every one can find salvation in his own religion."
" Howbeit," he continues, " we are at liberty to preach without let or hin
drance " — the opposite doctrine !
John of Montecorvino, a Franciscan, afterwards made bishop of Cambalec,
seems to have been intellectually on a par with the less intelligent of the
later Jesuit missionaries : and the learned Persian physician and vizier,
Rashid-eddin (1247-1318), refers mainly to the China of Marco Polo in
his descriptions. But it is interesting to know that the details of Chinese
administration were better understood by Persian statesmen then, than by
many Western diplomats of later ages. He describes the six Boards of
Administration, the nine grades of towns which give their names and rank
tothe officer in charge of them ;2 and is not unfamiliar with the etiquette
of the council chamber, while he particularly mentions the function of an
official, whose duty it is to examine all the drafts of memorials that are
presented to the Emperor. Even the geographical description of the dif
ferent provinces of the empire is tolerably circumstantial and correct,
considering the great distances and the imperfection of the available
maps. The travels of Odoric of Pordenone date from 13 16 to 1330, so that his
1 He is impressed, in spite of himself, by the greatness and order of the empire,
" within which no man dares to draw a sword against his neighbour," and with its
"variety of merchandise greater than in the territories of Rome or of Paris." (Cathay, ii.
p. 245.)
2 lb., p. 262. He explains the transfer of the seat of Empire to China by Kubla,
by the fact that it " was reckoned to surpass all other kingdoms and countries in the
world." (Ib., p. 257.)

232 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
Tesidence in China coincides with the decadence of the Mongol empire.1
The first city he came to, supposed to be Canton, seemed to him "as big
as three Venices " and lias more shipping than all Italy together. It is a
land in which Treviso and Vicenza would be places of small importance,
und in many parts the population is denser " than the crowds you see in
Venice on Ascension Day. And the land hath great store of bread, of
wine, of rice, of flesh and of fish of all sorts, and of all manner of victuals
whatever that are used by mankind. And all the people of this country
are traders and artificers, and no man ever seeketh alms, however poor he
be, as long as he can do anything with his own hands to help himself."
The men are comely enough, the women the most beautiful in the world,
and for less than a groat you can buy seven pounds of sugar or three hun
-dred pounds of fresh ginger ! The people of Zaiton are described by
the cheerful friar as "of pleasing manners, handsome and courteous,
especially to foreigners ; " and he finds in this city two houses of the Friars
Minor, with whom he deposits the relics of certain martyrs of his order
which he had brought from India.
A compilation made about 1330, by a certain archbishop of Soltania,
reproduces Marco Polo's admiration for the justice and humanity of the
i;reat Khan, so that no advices to the contrary effect can have yet been
embodied in the Lettres edifiantes of the period. Odoric, however, who,
in matters secular, is a more acute and independent observer than the arch
bishop, touches on one of the grievances of the Chinese when he mentions
the exceeding numerousness of the Imperial family; and his account of
the splendid pearls used for the decoration of the ladies of the court must
be read in connection with the complaints already recorded concerning
the pearl fisheries and the traffic in precious stones.
He describes the use of cormorants for fishing, the long nails and com
pressed feet cultivated by men and women of gentility; and localizes at
" Yang-chow," Marco's old government, the innkeeper's custom of providing
dinners at so much a head, for those desirous of entertaining their friends
without trouble. At Sunzumatu, which has not been quite conclusively
identified, silk is to be found in greater plenty " than perhaps any other
place on earth ; for when silk there is at its dearest, you can still have forty
pounds for less than eight groats."
The post-houses, roads and imperial magnificence are of course described
again, and so is the elaborate etiquette enforced by the master of the cere
monies, whose words of command, at the imperial receptions, have been
correctly interpreted to the traveller or understood by him, as his descrip
tion agrees closely with the ceremonies prescribed at length in the Mongol
code, and translated by M. Pauthier.2 The four scribes, who wait in
readiness '•' to take down all the words that the king may utter," carry the
imagination back three thousand years to the origin of such note-making,
1 lie took the Southern route, and thus landed first in the "noble province of Manzi."
(Cathay, i. p. 103 ff.)
- Marco Polo, p. 290 ff.

THE MONGOLS AbTER KUBLA. 233
which furnished the first materials for the classic book of History. And
the description of the artificial wooded hill, the "Green Mount" planted
by Kubla's orders with large trees of various kinds brought from afar, with
the earth around their roots, carries us forward to the horticultural triumphs
of a modern Jardin d'acclimataiion.
Commercial intercourse at this time between Italy and China was suffi
ciently frequent for Odoric to feel assured that his traveller's tales would
be confirmed in Venice by many who knew from personal experience of
their truth. The overland traffic was not less important than that by sea,
and Florentine, Venetian, and Genoese traders were to be met with upon
both routes. An employee of the great Florentine house of Bardi, Pego-
lotti by name, compiled about this time (1340) a practical commercial
¦guide and vocabulary,1 in which, along with other interesting and instruc
tive matter, he describes the journey for "such as will go from Azov to
Cathay, and come back with goods," and the comparative advantages of
land and water carriage : where are the best markets, and what goods it
is most profitable to lay in here or there in relation to the cost of transit.
At Azov the Genoese and Venetians were the " most favoured nations,"
and paid only 4 per cent duty on wine and hides, while other traders paid
5 per cent.
Pegolotti gives in detail the payments exacted from traders between the
•gulf of Iskenderan and Tabriz for caravanserais, and baths, guards, watch
men, duties and licenses, and he advises the merchant to give presents to
the custom-house officials and their servants, in consequence of which they
will undervalue the goods. The road from Tana (Azov) to Cathay is de-
-scribed as perfectly safe, but the lord of the land inherits the property of
travellers who die within his borders, unless they have a natural heir in
the same company. The first part of the road is the most dangerous, but
no serious disturbances are anticipated : for the traveller is informed that,
though he need not do so unless he likes, he may if he pleases, take a
woman of the country with him, and will find his comfort increased by so
doing. With a party of sixty " you will go as safely as if you were in your
own house." The cost of the journey for a merchant with interpreter,
¦servants, pack animals, and goods to the value of 25,000 gold florins, is
estimated at 300 to 400 florins ; the cost of the return journey depends on
the number of pack animals employed, but these will average about forty-
five florins each.
The weight drawn by each camel, ox, or horse wagon is further given,
and the price per pound of Chinese silk, which is expected to form the
chief article of traffic, so that we seem on the verge of being able to
estimate the percentage of profit made by a discreet trader ; but weights
and values are too uncertain for any trustworthy conclusion to be reached.
Putting the florin at 9*. 6d., the merchant's stock-in-trade will be worth
about ^12,000, and at the same rate the price of silk would be about $s.
a pound. Pegolotti declares that the paper money in which goods are paid
' Cathay, ii. p. 279 ff.

234 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
for is not depreciated, and the unanimity of foreigners upon this subject is
perplexing in the face of the not less uniform complaints of native writers,
who count the abuse of paper money by the Mongols among the causes
which led to the rebellion against their authority, resulting in the fall of
the dynasty.
A new paper money was issued in 1309, and about the same time, the
only metal coinage issued by the Mongols was put in circulation, but it
failed to obtain currency, and paper only continued to be used till their
expulsion. The inconveniences caused by the use of depreciated paper
could hardly be greater than those arising from the use of debased copper,
and from time out of mind, the Chinese traders had been familiar with the
latter. The good faith which presided over their commercial dealings
with each other and with foreigners brought these evils to a minimum ;
they were not aggravated by Bourse speculations, and hence the only sub
stantial grievance lay in the dealings of the Government with the native
traders and tax-payers ; and of these Odoric and Pegolotti might easily
remain ignorant.
Sir Henry Yule1 understands Pegolotti's account of his merchant's
itinerary as bringing him down the great canal to Hang-chow, and thence
back to Peking ; but the expressions used do not seem naturally to indicate
such a journey, and, in fact, it seems as if the line of overland traffic had
led normally to Mongolia, Peking, and the districts north of the Yellow
River, while maritime trade had stopped short in Southern China. Pego
lotti speaks of the capital city (Cambalec) as the resort of merchants, in
which there is a vast amount of trade ; and the absence of any special de
scription of the greatest seaport then known seems to indicate Peking as
the real goal of the journey. It is difficult to see what a European traveller
had to gain by going from one end of China to another, in the interval
between selling the goods he brought and buying those he meant to take
away, both of which it was Jiis interest to do in the market nearest to
the frontier, Si-ngan-fu for instance. To go to Hang-chow via Central Asia
and Peking would be as expensive as to go to Peking via the Indian Ocean
and the sandy mouth of the Hoang-ho.
It was in Southern China that the chief interruption of foreign traffic took
place towards the close of the Sung Dynasty, but it was regularly restored
in 1292. In 1356 the foreign trade at Canton was stopped, but only for a
year, and in the early decades of the Ming Dynasty it was tolerated, though
strictly regulated. At the beginning of the 15th century 120 houses
were built for foreigners, but " ships bringing tribute " were required to
land their goods and wait till harvest was over before attempting to dispose
of them.
The next in date of the Western travellers who brought independent
reports from the land of Cathay is another Minorite friar, despatched on
an embassy to China by Pope Benedict XII., in 1338. A letter had been
addressed by the Mongol Emperor to the head of Christendom inviting
1 Cathay, ii. p. 2S8.

THE MONGOLS AFTER KUBLA. 235
intercourse.1 Presents of horses and four legates were sent in reply, of
whom one was John of Florence, otherwise de' Marignolli, who was re
warded after his return by a Calabrian bishopric and commissioned by the
Emperor, Charles IV., to compose the annals of Bohemia. The good bishop,
apparently aware that he knew less about Bohemia than other parts of the
world, wisely conceived his task upon an extensive scale, which allowed
his description of India and Cathay to take precedence of the history of
Bohemian kings and bishops. The annals of the Franciscan Order men
tion the arrival of this embassy at the court of Cambalec in 1342, and the
Chinese annals for the same year mention the arrival of horses of unknown
race from the kingdom of Fu-lang, brought as an offering to the emperor.
The Bohemian chronicle adds some interesting details as to the enter
tainment of the embassy, which consisted of thirty-two persons and was
maintained at the court of Peking with all hospitality for four years at an
expense which the grateful friar estimates at not less than 4,000 marks.
Suitable apartments, meat and drink, costly raiment, all necessary
servants and '• even down to such things as paper for lanterns," everything
needful for their comfort and dignity was provided, at the imperial expense,
by the care of two princes specially told off to attend to their wants. The
overland route by which the ambassadors had arrived was closed by war
when the time came for their return, so they were conveyed in state
through Southern China, and besides the usual raptures over Campsay and
Zaiton, our author writes, "On our way we beheld the glory of the world in
such a multitude of cities, towns, and villages, and in other ways displayed,
that no tongue can give it fit expression." 3
Ibn Batuta, the greatest wanderer of his age, on reaching Southern
China, after various misfortunes on the road, speaks of the country as "the
safest as well as the pleasantest of all the regions on the earth for a
traveller."3 Besides repeating much that is already familiar to us, he
describes the dishes of lacquered ware, the greater cheapness of silk as
compared with cotton, and the skill of the native portrait painters, who
were employed, apparently in lieu of passports, to depict the features of
foreigners whom the Government may wish to identify. Another trait
which has not yet been mentioned is the custom by which, whenever a
Chinese junk is about to undertake a voyage, " the admiral of the port and
his secretaries go on board and take note of the number of soldiers,
servants, and sailors, who are embarked. The ship is not allowed to sail
till this form has been complied with. And when the junk returns to
China, the same officials again visit her and compare the persons found on
board with the numbers entered on their register. If any one is missing,
the captain is responsible and must furnish evidence of the death or
desertion of the missing individual or otherwise account for him."4
1 This emperor (Chun-ti, 1335) ii accused in the native annals of favouring "foreigners
of ill-regulated morals. "
2 Cathay, ii. p. 342.
3 lb., ii. p. 485. He was born 1304, and began his travels in 1325.
* lb., ii. p. 483. Cf. Ta Tsing Lu-li, 225, §31. China Review, viii. p. 13.

236 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
The institution of the Hong merchants, who were made responsible for
the foreign trade in recent times, existed already in embryo. The Mussul
man trader who landed in China was allowed to take up his abode either
with a resident merchant of his own faith or in an hotel. In the first
place the merchant, in the second the innkeeper was made responsible for
his property and sustenance, and was required to act honestly as trustee on
his behalf. The foreign merchant was allowed to buy slaves or marry if
he pleased ; but he was not allowed free access to the Chinese parts of
the town, as it was held contrary to public policy to allow the growth of
any class making a trade of ministering to the profligacy of foreigners.
The inland traffic was protected with the same kind of vigilance, and "you
may travel the whole nine months' journey to which the empire extends,
without the slightest cause of fear, even if you have treasure in your
charge," owing to the good care taken by the officers of the post and
hostelries to see that all lawful travellers pass on their way, and that none
disappear without being accounted for.
The only region in the world to be compared to the fertile banks of the
great Canal above Hang-chow, is " that space of four days' march between
Anbar and Anah," which includes the plain of the Euphrates for 120 miles
up the course of the river above Bagdad. Like other travellers, Ibn Batuta
observes that Cathay is the best cultivated land in the world ; " in the
whole country you will not find a bit of ground lying fallow," and his
inquiries as to the cause of a state of things so unusual in large Oriental
empires were met by the information that " if a piece of ground be left
uncultivated, they still oblige the people on it, or if there be none, the
people nearest it, to pay the land tax :"1 an account of the matter which,
though not strictly accurate in itself, hints at the two real facts, that private
owners are not allowed to leave their holdings untilled, and that the State
is interested in providing every plot with a cultivating owner, since so only
can the land tax be raised without difficulty.
There is no hint in any of these writers at any systematic policy of
isolation, or the exclusion of all foreigners from China, such as we meet
with in the 16th and 17th centuries. On the contrary, the Flowery
Land is a place of strange meetings, and Ibn Batuta recognizes in one
of the cities on the Grand Canal a Moor of Ceuta, whom he had met
formerly, not in his own native Tangiers, but in Delhi, and whose brother
he was to encounter two years later in Negro land. The world-wide
wanderings which we are apt to consider a new trait in the 19th cen
tury are only a reproduction of experiences familiar to the races that
were old when the tongue of the English-speaking colonists of the future
was in its infancy. It was after experience, several times renewed, of the
results of a foreign policy, such as would now be called liberal, that the
borders of the Chinese Empire were deliberately closed against the intru
sion of Europeans. 1 Cathay, ii. p. 503.

CHAPTER XXI.
THE MING DYNASTY.
(1368-1649, a.d.)
We enter now on the penultimate chapter of Chinese history. Allowing
for the slow development and long duration of the empire, there is a
certain analogy between the brilliant dynasties of China and those single
reigns or periods which count as epochs in the West. And, from this point
of view, the period of native rule between the Mongols and the Mantchus
may be regarded as the 18th century of China. The founder of the
Ming Dynasty does not certainly seem more distant in the historical
perspective than William of Orange, and the porcelain of his successor,
Yung-lo, occupies in the esteem of collectors the same sort of place as
belongs with us to the decorated furniture of Queen Anne; and, to com
plete the parallel, the literature of the dynasty is copious and correct, but
less original and varied than that of the Sung, which has been described as
the Elizabethan age of Chinese poetry.
Hung-woo, which means " The warlike fortune," x is not the proper
name of the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, though it is often so used.
It is the name which he gave to the years during which he reigned. The
emperor of China, it has been said, has during his life " no name peculiar
to himself." After his death, one is assigned to him by which he is
known in history, and some of these names repeat themselves by a tacit
convention. Thus " Tai-tsou," or "great ancestor," is the stock name for
the founder of a dynasty, Tai-tsong, "great and honourable prince," for the
second ruler who consolidates its power ; and other names, like Wu-ti, the
" warlike," Wen-ti, the " learned " prince are of frequent recurrence in the
chronicles. These and others repeat themselves in different dynasties,
with the adjunct of the dynastic name, so that the proper historic name of
the expeller of the Mongols, whose reign (1368-98) was called "warlike
fortune," is Tai-tsou-Ming, the Great Ancestor of the Bright Dynasty.
After abandoning the tonsure for the sword in 1352, the ex-Buddhist
was loyal to the chief under whose command he enlisted ; but he was dis
gusted with the oppressions exercised by officers and soldiery, and at the
earliest opportunity, set up on his own account as partisan leader and
protector of the people. Instead of ranging the country in search of
1 Chinese Repository, ix. p. 390. In Giles' Chinese English Dictionary, pp. 1364 ff.,
there is a complete list, from the Han period onward, of dynasties and kings, with the
dynastic title and the titles of reigns or periods given in parallel columns.
237 '

238 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
plunder, he introduced good order in the districts he subdued, forbidding
his troops to plunder, and in general conforming to the precepts of
Mencius regarding the way to "win the States." The success which
attended his arms reconciled his soldiers to the self-denial imposed on
them, and he gradually superseded one rebel chief after another, including
some of those who had claimed the title of Emperor.
Two years after his formal accession, a census of the cultivated lands
was taken, and the tax brought in about 29^ million measures of grain,
or slightly more than in the palmiest days of the Sung Dynasty; but
silk and money are the only other objects mentioned in the table of
revenue, so that fewer commodities and thus on the whole an amount
of less value was received in kind. In the same year an expedient for
supplying the frontiers with grain was introduced, of which we shall hear
more in the next century.1 Traders were allowed to receive salt from the
central Government mines in return for rice delivered to the border
garrisons at rates varying according to the distance which it had to be
brought. Local tributes consisting of articles of costly luxury, such as
ginseng, wine, and scented rice, were declined by the emperor, lest the
collection should become unduly burdensome. The Government was
called on to deal at the same time with the two evils always bequeathed
by a period of civil disorder — the depopulation of agricultural districts
and the growth of a landless class ; and, as is usual in China, the two evils
were allowed to cure each other. The landless inhabitants of five towns,
amounting in all to 4,000 households, were removed to colonise a vacant
district ; cattle, seeds, wagons, and necessary provisions were given them,
together with three years' immunity from taxation. In other parts soldiers
were employed to reclaim waste lands ; and in the North, where population
was sparse, the number of public functionaries was reduced.
Perhaps the most durable result of the Mongol empire was the opening
of Tatary to the tea trade. This beverage had in the course of a century
begun to take its present place as a necessary of life upon, the Steppes.
The trade was important enough to attract the attention of financiers, and
a tax of a tenth was levied on the tea which was sold in exchange for
horses, and which all the tribes of the West rushed to buy. In 1375 an
attempt was made to limit the currency to paper and copper cash, to the
exclusion of tea; but on the introduction of paper the supply of horses fell
off, and the export of silk and tea had to be renewed to obtain them. The
regulation price for a first-class horse was eighty pounds of tea, and for the
next hundred years or so, in fact, until the Chinese empire deliberately
abandoned the use of carriage horses, in the middle of the 16th cen
tury, the regulation of the trade was a constant anxiety to the native
administrators. In 138 1 a list was drawn up of the contributions and forced labour to be
1 The Emperor Kien-lung's History of ihe Ming Dynasty, translated (in part) by
l'Abbe de la Marre, is much fuller than De Mailla in its account of social and economic
conditions and occurrences, but unfortunately the translation only goes as far as the first
century of Ming rule.

THE MING DYNASTY. 239
exacted throughout the empire ; no households were reckoned to make a
village ; the ten largest taxpayers being counted as chiefs ; the other
hundred were divided into ten sections, so that theoretically each headman
represented ten households. The old people and widows and orphans
were not counted ; the lists were revised every ten years, and the share of
each group in the public works allotted every year.
Tai-tsou died in 139S, after a reign of thirty years, bequeathing the
empire to a grandson of sixteen, the eldest son of his eldest son, instead
of, as had been his own wish, to an active and ambitious younger son of
his own. The native historians of his reign had had a difficult task ; for
Tai-tsou's conduct, at least after his accession, was by no means uniformly
virtuous, while precedent requires that the founder of a dynasty shall serve
as an exemplar to all his imperial descendants. In 1402 an order was
given to re-write the true history of his reign, as the officer to whom the
task had been first entrusted was put to death for his veracity ; and even
this second attempt gave so little satisfaction that ten years later we hear
of the same history being again revised.
But the most damning entries on Tai-tsou's record are those made with
Confucian brevity in the history written by his Mantchu successor, whom
Europeans call Kien-lung. This work is written in the curt style of the
" Spring and Autumn ; " but what " righteous decision " can be more
eloquent than that involved in the single word " assassination," used to
describe the death or execution of Se-lou in 1382, and of Wang-pou in
1396, both guilty only of addressing remonstrances to the emperor, the
former on his addiction to the worship of Fo, and the latter in the dis
charge of his office as censor.
When Wang-pou was being led to execution, the Emperor appeared to
repent, and asked him if he would amend his ways? He replied with
stubborn dignity : " If I have committed no crime, why order me to be
put to death ? If I have committed any crime, how can you let me live ?
To-day I desire to die." The enraged Emperor ordered the execution to
proceed ; but as he passed the office of the censors, Pou cried out, " Dr.
Such-an-one ! Record this day, this month, this year, the emperor put to
death the blameless censor Pou ! " And even so it was done, to the
edification at least of the imperial historian four centuries later ; who, by
the way, might have been saved from his own few acts of tyrannical
barbarism had a Wang-pou been numbered among his subjects.
Tai-tsou had been persuaded not to nominate his younger son to the
throne, lest such a course should lead to a disputed succession ; but the
discontented uncle, who was already in possession of an important princi
pality, revolted, and, in 1403, obtained the empire, while his nephew,
Kien-wen-ti, fled into the Southern provinces, disguised as a Buddhist
priest. History speaks throughout of the new Emperor as an usurper,
though he was a zealous patron of letters. He ordered the compilation
of a great encyclopaedia, which was never printed on tjae ground of ex
pense ; but a single imperfect copy of it was said subsequently to have

240 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
preserved 385 ancient and rare works that would otherwise have been,
lost. Yung-lo followed his father's example in attempting to give a penal
character to the land tax. In his first assessment, Tai-tsou had punished
certain Southern towns for their adherence to another leader by confiscat
ing the territory of all the great families and rich inhabitants, and hatl
taken their annual rent as the standard for the tax. This tax had again
been raised on account of the fertility of the district, so that Stt-chow,
Hang-chow, and three other towns were disproportionately burdened ; and
the former alone, in 1381, paid as much as the whole province of Tche-
kiang. In 1400, as a measure of relief, the land tax on the towns of
Kiang-nan and Tche-kiang was equalized, and the maximum tax apparently
fixed at one measure of grain per acre. Yung-lo, however, renewed the
attempt to tax personal opponents, and after putting one such to death
for loyalty towards his deposed nephew, he increased the taxes upon his
family property, " that all future generations may curse his memory," — an
edict which was doubtless among those that his son earned credit by
rescinding. In 1409 three horse- fairs were established on the frontiers; but every
thing except tea and horses were treated as contraband. Peculation fol
lowed as a natural consequence from the attempt to keep the trade in the
hands of officials; and in 1409 an officer was accused of giving 80,000 lbs.
of tea for seventy indifferent horses, or more than 11,000 lbs. for what
was priced in Tai-tsou's tariff at 80 lbs. There must, however, still have
been some honest and capable officials, for in 141 1 the Yellow River was
successfully conducted back into one of its old channels, after a flood at
Cai-fong-fu, in which 14,000 families perished. In 1413, we are told,
" the people were made to maintain horses," a statement of which we
learnt the significance in the days of Wang-ngan-shi and the Mongols.
In the last reign the people of Nanking, the then capital, were required
to provide for the emperor's stud, and the measure was now extended to
Peking; families under a certain size had to maintain one horse, and those
over the size had to maintain two. The smaller households, which formed
groups subject to mutual responsibility or collective punishment, were
required to maintain one horse for every seven households. As the horses
multiplied, the people had to give up more of their pastures to make room
for them, and the labour of herding them occupied all or most of the youths
of fifteen, to whom their charge was committed. By a further practical
abuse the people were also required to maintain free of charge the horses
of official underlings.
In 1321 the capital was removed to Peking, and an instructive memorial1
presented against the change helps to show why the vicinity of the court
was not regarded as a boon by the townspeople. The town had to be
remodelled, and the modern walls, enclosing a much smaller city than
Kubla's, built. Besides the necessary expense of such public works, the
1 De la Marre, p. 193.

THE MING DYNASTY. 241
workmen oppressed the people, demolishing and removing their houses
arbitrarily and without need, either wantonly or for the sake of bribes.
The memorialist repeats the complaint that products are taxed twice over ;
the people live on roots and bark, while 10,000 priestly idlers are main
tained at court. Every year the Emperor gives largesses of precious wares
and money to obtain a few horses from the adjoining subject tribes, and
when obtained they are apportioned amongst the people, who have to
make good whatever losses occur amongst them. " What is the good of
so many horses ? " asks the writer in conclusion ; " these people are not
moved by any real desire to be governed by a wise ruler."
The embassy sent to the court of China in 1419 by Shah Rukh, the son
of Timour, who was meditating the reconquest of China when he died,
may have had a genuine political purpose, but the border Tatar tribes
were certainly innocent of any desire except that of finding an advan
tageous market for their wares. A writer quoted by M. Remusat1 observes,
under head of the year 1424, " All the barbarians are very curious about
the stuffs and merchandise of China, so that the markets were con
stantly filled with merchants who came to make exchanges under pretext
of bringing tribute." The writer goes on to explain that it was attempted
to repress this disorder ; but the so-called tribute-bearers, who received
free quarters and maintenance, always contrived to leave stragglers behind
them to dispose of their unsold goods.
In 1424 the usurper was peaceably succeeded by his son,2 whose short
reign was only marked by the rehabilitation of those whom Yung-lo had
proscribed as traitors. The ten years' reign of the next king, Sieuen-tsong,
opened with a curious complaint lodged by the literati of the Northern
provinces, who, it must be supposed, had fallen behind the subjects of
the Southern Sung in literary culture. At any rate the Northerners com
plained that all the highest degrees were taken at the examinations by
candidates from the South, and the Emperor was entreated to remedy this
grievance. The proposed compromise, that one-third of the whole number of
doctors' degrees awarded should be reserved to the North and two-thirds
kept by the South, was not very soothing to the amour propre of Northern
scholars. In 1380 mention is made of an exchange or transfer of officers
in the North and South, — a tentative measure in the same direction as the
present fixed rule, which forbids an officer to be employed in his native
place. Evidently it would be a hardship to the Northern provinces to be
habitually governed by Southerners, the rather if the Southerners had been
favoured in the original distribution of offices, on account of political
sympathies opposed to those of their destined subjects.
Sieuen-tsong began his reign with several minor reforms. In 1430 he
1 Histoire de la ville de Khotan, p. 104.
2 The tomb of Yung-lo is one of the best preserved in the famous burial-ground of
-the dynasty, which the head of the dispossessed family is still required by the Govern
ment to visit annually for the performance of the ancestral worship.
VOL. II. — F.C. R

242 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
proposed to excuse the people from making good the loss of the imperial
horses, and asked Yang-se-khy if there was anything else he ought to do.
He was told to excuse arrears for wood and forage, to enforce justice in
the purchases made on account of the emperor, not to oppress the over-
numerous workmen in the capital, and to reduce the rent of the State
lands. The rents of the public fields around Su-chow were reduced
accordingly from twenty to seven million bushels. The transport of the
grain required for the army had become even a greater burden than the
supply of the grain itself, and it was hailed as a welcome measure of relief
when, in 143 1, the troops were allowed to undertake the transport them
selves. About this time a whole batch of virtuous officers were appointed,
and continued to hold their posts for the next ten or twenty years. The
same vermilion pencil which stigmatizes the " assassination " of Wang-pou
observes now, " It was a prosperous time." One of these virtuous
governors fell to the share of Su-chow ; he opened a granary called the
" Labourers' Aid," out of which all loans to the poor and losses by
weather and theft were defrayed, and during the twenty years of his
government scarcity was unknown, and the taxes were never in arrear.
Several times in the course of the half-century the system of money
fines, extended by Yung-lo in 1413, is objected to on the ground that it is
useless to let officers guilty of corrupt practices ransom themselves from
punishment : " They lose their place by coveting wealth, and regain it
by giving up a part of their gains. Is that the way to check avarice?"
Yng-tsong, a child of eight, succeeded his father in 1436 ; as he grew up,
a council of regency, famous as " the three Yangs," and the Empress
mother struggled vainly to resist the influence of a favourite eunuch. In
1443 he took the government into his own hands, with the eunuch as
chief minister, and, what proved still more calamitous, as commander-in-
chief against the Tatars in a war provoked partly at least by his own
imprudence. The confusion between trade and tribute, wilfully kept up by Chinese
officials, was a fertile source of trouble. Regarding the Tatars as tribu
taries, it was becoming for the Emperor to be liberal in his presents, to
maintain all the followers of the embassies, and not to be too exacting as
to the quality of the gifts brought by the barbarians. On the other hand,
these liberalities attracted vast caravans of camp-followers, whose only
object was to share in the Emperor's gifts and the free rations enjoyed
by his guests. The people of one district alone, which used to send
embassies of thirty persons, sent so many thousands, that their entertain
ment cost the market town as much as 300,000 taels. The number of
tribute-bearers was then limited to 300, but over 3,000 came.
The Tatars complained that damaged wares were supplied, and that
members of their embassies failed to return in safety. An unsuccessful
campaign, arising from these grievances, ended in the death of the eunuch
and the capture of the Emperor. The latter incident is regarded in a
curious light by Chinese politicians. Yesien, the Tatar general, at first

THE MING DYNASTY. 243
demanded a ransom for his prisoner, and when that was refused, hoped to
secure the gratitude of his involuntary guest by an unconditional release.
To his disgust, however, he discovered that the Chinese regarded his
prisoner as de facto dethroned ; and that the Empress mother had forthwith
proceeded to appoint a successor, as upon the emperor's death.
Passing over Yng-tsong's infant son she appointed his brother, known
as King-ti. The Tatar ambassador inquired if Yao and Shun would have
behaved like this younger brother, and was told that Yao gave the empire
to Shun, who was no relation, and that in this case the unfortunate elder
brother ceded place to his junior. Finally Yng-tsong was released without
ransom, and the ritual observed by Hieuen-tsong of the- Tang Dynasty was
carefully observed on his return. A sham protest against his own elevation
was made by the reigning prince, upon which he was commanded on his
allegiance by the ci-devant Emperor to accept the succession.
Peace being now concluded with the Tatars, their complaints were con
sidered, and met with the rejoinder that their furs and horses, like the
Chinese silks, were apt to be of inferior quality, both doubtless by default
of inferior officers ; while out of embassies with three or four thousand
members, some were likely to misbehave, run away, or perish in brawls.
King-ti was desirous of nominating his own son instead of his elder
brother's to the succession, but this was not permitted, and in fact upon
his death Yng-tsong was restored and allowed to bestow the epithet of
" the Perverse" on his supplanter. The empire was not in a very flourish
ing condition. The paper money which in Tai-tsou's reign was worth
1,000 cash now circulated for three. The use of metal money was forbidden
in the vain attempt to force paper into use, and a similar failure attended
the new tax imposed on market gardens in the two capitals, with the same
object, in the hope that if the gardeners were taxed and compelled to pay
in paper, a demand for the unpopular currency would be created and its
value raised. From time to time benevolent edicts were published re
mitting taxes or arrears, but such action no longer met with universal
approbation, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the period allows him
self to protest, or at least to inquire where else he is to get the means of
meeting other necessary expenses.
As this is the first time that such a difficulty is noticed in the annals, it is
not without reason that Wang-tchi-tchang 1 contrasts the modern policy
with that recognised in the Rites of Chow. It was probably a real inno
vation for the fixed expenses of the Court and Government in time of peace
to be so considerable that it was impossible to remit taxes without danger
of a deficit. China moves slowly, and she is still without a National Debt ;
but in the 15th century she had already fallen from the state of economic
innocence in which a surplus is the rule, simply because money is not
spent on account of the Government until it is received in the Treasury.
Two events are recorded for the year 1464 — the death of a native of
1 Ante, p. 35.

244 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
Peking at the age of no years,1 and the " beginning of the establishment of
imperial farms." It is recorded as something new that the Emperor kept
for himself the confiscated lands of political or other offenders. " After
this " (i.e. in the reign of Hien-tsong, 1465-85) " members of the imperial
family and nobles frequently took lands from the people to make estates."
Light is thrown both on this abuse and the change in the financial order
just referred to, by the complaints which begin to be made, that the revenue
of the Emperor and Empress is now regarded as- private property to be
spent in buildings, and fetes, instead of in maintaining the army or pre
venting scarcities. In fact, the court had begun to hanker after a Civil List,
while the people still took the primitive view that the sovereign should pay
the expenses of his sovereignty out of the pocket which his subjects fill for
him. In early English history the same point gave rise to a good deal of
controversy, but in the monarchies of the West it was raised comparatively
soon after their foundation ; the noticeable point in China is that the dis
cussion of it could be put off so long.
In 1468 2 one of the Emperor's daughters, a prince, and a priest had
asked for grants of land and had obtained them, in one case as much as
4,000 acres. An officer represented that uncultivated land used to be
allotted free of taxes to the cultivators — of old an estate of 10,000 acres
formed the hereditary domain of 100 families : was it fitting to make such
a grant to one man ? The emperor on reflection thought not, and ordered
restitution, but later applications on a somewhat more moderate scale were
nevertheless allowed to pass. The following year the Empress's maternal
uncle asked for a grant of fields which he declared to be neither taxed nor
cultivated. A commission of inquiry was sent, and reported that all the
land was on the register and under cultivation, but that 7,000 mow of con
fiscated land were ownerless. The uncle thought this was not worth having,
and another commission was sent ; but, instead of bringing back a dis
creetly revised statement of facts, their report set forth that " Since the
beginning of the dynasty the lands in the department concerned had been
ceded in perpetuity to the cultivators, to till and reclaim, free from taxa
tion for the encouragement of agriculture. Is it fitting that families united
to the emperor by the memory of services rendered or matrimonial
alliances should dispute with the people for an inch of ground ? " The
two signitaries of this formidable theory of noblesse oblige were thrown into
prison, but released on the unanimous demand of the magistracy.
The true state of the case probably was that the coveted land had been
granted to the cultivators on the usual terms, viz. a temporary immunity
from taxation, and that when the time of grace had expired, careless or
corrupt officials omitted to carry the reclaimed lands on to the register for
taxing. And if this be so, it is significant that a small error in form of the
subject was held no plea for a greater one by the Government.
1 The rarity of improbable cases of longevity in the Chinese records is one of the
strongest confirmations of their authenticity.
2 De la Marre, p. 341.

THE MING DYNASTY. 245
In 1474 the Great Wall was repaired, and military colonies settled near it,
so that the empire was not troubled from without, yet the number of house
less adventurers in at least three provinces was so great as to raise the
alarm of brigandage. No fewer than 438,000 persons were enumerated,
and all the well-disposed settled in new townships with a light assessment.
About this time, the dealers in Government salt, who since 1370 had acted
as contractors to the frontier armies, began to offer money for the salt in
lieu of grain. Originally they had established agricultural colonies at points
convenient for the supply of grain to the troops, and it was only after de
livering the grain to the army that they became entitled to receive their
consignments of salt. The money given for salt in lieu of grain was, of
course, supposed to be spent on supplies ; but there being now no induce
ment for the traders to keep up the border markets, cultivation fell off, and,
when provisions came to be wanted, there were no means of obtaining
them. Hence in ^92 the regulations of the salt monopoly were revised.
Hitherto purchases for the garrisons of the Great Wall had been made only
wholesale, by the 10,000 bushels, perhaps in the first instance to limit the
number of authorized salt merchants. But in 1497 it was decreed that
small quantities might be received, and in two months' time provisions of
all kinds were supplied in plenty again.
While thus free from disturbance on the North, China was not altogether
without anxieties in regard to her protectorate over Central Asia. The
rich oasis of Hami, one of the last and most important halting-places for
caravans from the West, had been held, under Chinese protection, by a
prince of the banished Mongol Dynasty. In 1488 this prince was surprised
and his territory seized by Hahema, the chief of Turfan ; and as a- means
of retaliation against the latter, the Chinese frontier was closed for a time
to trade. On this occasion the blockade was not long maintained ; Hami
was given up and the road re-opened for tribute-bearers, among whom
none were received with higher honours than the embassy of the prince of
Turfan. Nevertheless, the episode has its importance : it is the second
link, if the difficulties with the Tatar horse-fairs are reckoned as the first,
in the chain of causes which led in the 16th cent, to the full development
of that policy of exclusiveness, which we have learnt to regard as character
istically Chinese.
At the close of the 15th century the census returns give a population
of over 50 millions, forming slightly over 9 million families. The area of
cultivated lands given in the same tables has been estimated at about 200
million acres, or an average of over 20 acres to a family — the portion
which under the Sung formed a provision for a favoured servant. The
grain revenue at the same time consisted of 266 million measures of grain
of 100 lbs. each. Taking the old estimate of 2 lbs. of rice a day as a
liberal allowance for the support of one person, this revenue is equivalent
tq a year's rations for 36 millions, or more than half the tax-paying popula
tion. For this period we miss the careful comparative tables of Ma-twan-lin and

246 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
his continuator. In the latter half of the 16th century the money revenue
is stated at 43 million taels, — say _£i 5,000,000 sterling, — but the value of
money at the time is uncertain. All we can be sure of is that the revenue
was still moderate, and yet the rate of taxation per head of the population
stood higher than at present. The wealth of the empire was meanwhile
evidently on the increase, to judge from the treasures confiscated on the
fall of a chief eunuch; 24 million taels in gold, 251 million silver taels,
two measures of precious stones, suits of armour, rings, etc., of precious
and other metals, with furniture and dresses described as fit for an emperor,
represented the accumulations of a single favourite during his short term
of office.
The ascendancy of the eunuchs showed itself in the usual way. In 1504
the historiographers complain that their occupation will be gone if the
Emperor sees functionaries in private with no officer present to take down
his words : " If this continues, it is to be feared that after a time every one
will write things down in his own way, and there will be no record of the
sequence of events." The Emperor was finally requested to order the
mandarins who were at court to write the accounts of their interviews, and
to hand the record on to the historians after submitting it to him. Even
if this recommendation was followed, we need not wonder that there is
some want of vigour and variety in the annals of this dynasty.
In 1 513 the quarrels with the Tatars for the protectorate of Hami were
renewed, and, while the Emperor with his troops amused himself by hunt
ing expeditions north of the Great Wall, Tatar bands ravaged Shensi,
carrying off booty and prisoners. Wu-tsong, the reigning emperor (1506-
152 1), also wished to visit Southern China and enjoy the pleasure of
sailing on the waters of the Han and the Kiang. He was dissuaded by a
threatened rebellion, and by the strongly adverse feeling of his councillors.
The tours of inspection ascribed to the emperors of the first dynasties had
long been forgotten, and, as in the Tso Chuen, it was now taken for
granted that an imperial progress can only be an expensive amusement
for which the people will have to pay. The utmost to be expected from
the Court is to do no mischief, and with that object it is best at home.
He succeeded, subsequently, in passing several months at Nanking, during
which, we are told, he paid as little attention to business as previously.
He died without male heirs, and without having appointed a successor ;
so the vacancy was filled as usual by the Empress, who selected a boy of
fourteen, the eldest son of the second son of Hien-tsong.
In 1547, Yenta, a Tatar chief on the borders of Shansi, applied to be
received as " tributary," or in other words as a person admitted to trade
within the Chinese border. His only desire was to obtain a market for
his horses ; and when his request was refused, he invaded the territories of
the recalcitrant suzerain. In 155 1, it was proposed by a general to allow
horse-fairs on the frontier ; Yang-ke-ching of the Board of War objected,
and for some time Chinese statesmen go "in" and "out" of office upon
this question. Yang was imprisoned for his opposition, but restored to

THE MING DYNASTY. 247
favour two years later, when his objection proved to be well founded. At
first the horses were accepted at a reasonable price, and Yenta sent two of
a rare kind as tribute to the Emperor. But his motives were suspected, as
he continued to prowl round and press for more markets, and the fairs
were abolished as giving a pretext for Tatar inroads. The chronicles of
the time are very meagre, and, so far as one can judge, certainly not
written with the eloquence of a Su-che or the sagacity of a Ssema-kwang,
but their scantiness only makes the prominence given to this Tatar market
question the more significant.
A hostile cloud now appears on the horizon in a third quarter. In 1559
complaints are made of the inroads of Japanese pirates. In 1403 Japan
had paid tribute to Yung-lo, but this soon ceased, and in the interval there
had been little intercourse, friendly or otherwise, between the two nations.
Friendly powers not calling themselves tributary were only allowed to send
embassies once in ten years, and such a privilege naturally soon fell into
disuse. But while Tatar and European traders were trying to force their
way uninvited and unwelcome into the markets of China, native trade had
made an outlet for itself in this not less dangerous direction. And the
greed and bad faith of the traders was considered to have provoked the
attacks subsequently made by the Japanese on the coasts of the empire.
Each warlike Japanese reckoned himself a match for ten of the proud and
wealthy foreigners who had the impudence to try and cheat him, and the
spoils of war in such a case were tempting.
The Chinese Government, to do it justice, has never wished its subjects
to make money out of its tributaries ; on the contrary, it has winked in
dulgently at the opposite result, and itself paid virtual tribute in the form
of gifts to almost all who asked it. But it is one thing for a Government
to wish its subjects to be true and just in all their dealings, and another
to undertake to make them so. The commercial probity of the Chinese
in their dealings with each other is a triumph of the policy of Laissez faire ;
amongst persons of cultivated intelligence a bankrupt gets no credit and a
swindler no custom, and so commercial morality takes care of itself. But,
as has been seen in other empires, traders who, for these or other reasons,
are moderately honest at home, allow themselves more license in dealing
with an inferior race, and the inferior race retaliates with its own best
weapons. The fundamental difference between China and other com
mercial empires is that in such a case she considers the civilized citizen
who has got himself into hot water with savages as ipso facto in the wrong,
and instead of sending war junks to support or avenge him, she tries
sincerely to protect the inferior races against the enterprise and acuteness
of her own subjects, forbidding and punishing whatever may lead to
aggression. The long reign of Chi-tsong (152 1-1 566), though free from any great
convulsion, was not "a prosperous time." A memorial was addressed to
him in the last year of his life, reminding him of the good intentions and
fair prospects with which he ascended the throne, when he eyen forbade

2 48 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
the erection of statues to Confucius, lest they should be mistaken for idols ;
and rehearsing all the misfortunes which his backslidings had brought upon
the empire. The memorialist was at first thrown into prison, but soon
afterwards released and restored to office.
The Emperor's death followed shortly, and, if everything in the Chinese
annals is literally true, he dictated a deathbed confession, exhorting his
subjects and successor to beware of following his bad example. It is said
that he ordered this edifying document to be published after his death ; at
all events it was so published. Mu-tsong, his successor, began by imprison
ing the vendors of so-called elixirs of immortality ; but in other respects his
morals can have been little improvement on those of his father, as he is
accused in the history of pottery of a taste for china decorated with
licentious subjects.
In 1571, Yenta applied again for the title of tributary prince, and with
representatives of seventeen hordes asked to pay tribute and to be allowed
to bring horses to sell at appointed market-places. The Council of State
was divided, the votes being twenty-two for, seventeen against, granting the
application ; five of the twenty-two were for allowing the tribute, which
Yenta did not care about, and refusing the markets, which he did, so
that in effect the opinions were equally divided ; the emperor decided to
agree. In 1572, the first year of Chin-tsong's reign, the Tatar sent a tribute of
250 chosen horses ; but the danger of concessions to such neighbours
became manifest in 1574, when his son asked for a horse-fair to the west
of the Hoang-ho. The governor-general of the province pointed out that
this was opening a gate for the Tatars to come in whenever they pleased ;
but, as on former occasions, when they revenged themselves for the refusal
by raids for plunder, the Chinese gave way, and the Emperor granted
license for two fairs. In 1577 fresh demands were made for a market for
tea as well as horses; but after the death of Yenta, in 1583, the leading
role passes to another branch of the great Tatar race.
In 1581 (the same year that Michel Roger, the first of the Jesuit mis
sionaries, entered China) the Nutche Tatars, representatives of the old
Leao Dynasty, reappear upon the scene. On the accession of the Ming
Dynasty they were almost crushed for harbouring the banished Mongols,
but they had since thriven by the trade in ginseng, horsehair, and furs ;
and after some internecine wars, they began to consolidate into one king
dom, from whence the future Mantchu conquest was to proceed. They
were apparently ready and willing to adopt a settled life, and might not
have sought to disturb the integrity of the empire if they had been received
as bona-fi.de subjects, or if their rights as tributary allies had been respected.
The Mantchus date the foundation of their dynasty from 1618, its founder
"being 'the son of a Tatar chief, assassinated by Chinese officers in the course
of a discreditable aggression upon a settled Tatar colony, dependent but
not subject. The officials of Leao claimed to treat the Tatar districts as
belonging to their Government, whereas they had been formally ceded to

THE MING DYNASTY. 249
the barbarians for occupation. The proposed official visit of inspection
was resisted, and upon this the whole colony was evicted by force and the
inhabitants transferred to the interior of the province.
In all earlier troubles with the Tatars, the aggressions came from the
latter, and the Chinese could only be blamed for injudicious concessions
and a weak military defence ; but on this occasion, corrupt officers seem
to have been misled, by the aptitude of these colonies for a settled life,
into the belief that they had forgotten how to fight like other Tatars, and
might be plundered with impunity. They were undeceived by the terrible
fidelity with which the first Mantchu Emperor kept his vow, to immolate
two hundred thousand Chinese to his murdered father's memory.
While trouble was thus brewing on the north-west, a costly and disastrous
campaign had been proceeding outside the frontier on the north-east,
against the Japanese, who disputed the Chinese protectorate of Corea. In
1599 the generals at the seat of war were expressly advised to send home
only reports of successes, real or imaginary ; the consequences of the real
defeats, which were not reported, took some time to make themselves felt,
but the loss of men and money in this Corean war was one chief cause of
the dynasty's fall. The troops who should have garrisoned the frontier
against the Tatars were butchered by the Japanese, while even a foreigner
at the southern extremity of the empire learnt to associate the extortions
of the eunuchs, the new taxes and the inquisition into private fortunes,
which provoked popular riots, with the fact that the Corean war had
emptied the imperial treasury. In 16 16 there was a famine, and a dog for
eating was dearer to buy than a young man for a servant.
The reign of Chin-tsong (called the period Wan-lih) came to an end in
1620 ; the standards of the Mantchus had already been seen at the gates of
the capital, and the end was approaching. The next seven years are almost
entirely taken up with wars, in the course of which the Mantchu Emperor
claims continually to have right as well as might on his side, and accuses
the Chinese of arrogance and bad faith. In 1628 Hoai-tsong, the last of
the Ming emperors, ascended the throne. At the outset of the next
campaign the Mantchu Emperor ordered his troops to spare non-combatants,
trees and buildings, not to maltreat their prisoners, and to give quarter to
all who asked it. As he advanced, proclamations were issued inviting the
officers, soldiers, and common people to submit, reminding them that the
Leao, the Kin, and the Yuen had before now become masters of China.
Who could say that Heaven did not intend him to succeed the Ming ?
As a first step towards claiming their inheritance, he sent to perform
funeral ceremonies at such of the graves of the Kin Emperors as were still
preserved. In 1631 he adopted the Chinese methods of administration;
three years later he instituted examinations on the Chinese model, and
founded schools and prizes for the study of the three languages, Mantchu,
Mongol, and Chinese. In 1635, at the instance of Mongol and Mantchu
princes, he consented to take the title of Emperor of China ; and, though
he died without designating a successor, the Tatar armies were still

250 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
victorious, and in 1642 Cai-fong-fu itself fell into their hands, after a siege-
in which the horrors of war were aggravated by flood and famine ; human
flesh was sold in the streets of the starving city.
Meanwhile the Chinese court was in danger from native rebels almost or
quite as formidable as the Tatars. In 1643 the Imperial general was
reduced to beg the assistance of the European Tang-ja-wang (Adam
Schall), who understood the use of artillery and the construction of bridges
of boats. In accepting the command, the general had counted on the
private resources of his family and himself; but on arriving at the seat of
war, he found all his possessions in the hands of the rebels, and had no
means of paying his troops ; no assistance was to be obtained from the
imperial revenues, which were distributed by the eunuchs among their own
families and supporters. His force was thus paralyzed, and Li-tse-ching,
the rebel chief, pressed on victoriously to the gates of Peking.
In this crisis Hoai-tsong appealed to his remaining adherents for advice;
some proposed abdication, others flight to Southern China, others thought
posterity would condemn the weakness of both these expedients ; but no
voice at once loyal and vigorous was to be heard, and the unhappy Emperor
could only wait in hopes of succour from without. Before this could
arrive, panic and treason delivered the virtually impregnable capital into
the hands of the rebels ; and to save himself from capture, the last Emperor
of the Ming hung himself by the girdle, having first traced upon his
clothes a few characters in which he protested that his shortcomings
alone were not to blame ; the nobles in his service had betrayed him,
by concealing the truth as to his affairs. His body was left to the mercy
of his enemies ; he only prayed that the innocent people might be spared.
Hoai-tsong was justified in complaining of the pusillanimity of his
adherents, for even a loyal general in command of an army on the frontier
against the Mantchus could think of no better way to avenge his master's
death than to invite the Mantchus themselves to come and help him to de
feat the rebel, offering as a reward not only gold, silver, and silk, but also
a number of girls, " of which he knew the Tatars to be in want, to serve as
wives for their young men." Li-tse-ching had proclaimed himself emperor,
but made no attempt to hold Peking, and was in retreat when the Chinese
army, joined by 60,000 Mongols and Mantchus, intercepted his passage.
The victory of the allied forces was complete ; but the barbarian troops, as
might have been foreseen, declined to take their departure when it was
won. For eight years there had been no Mantchu emperor, only a Council of
State, where all the princes sat in order of age. They now proposed to
choose an emperor for themselves and China, rendering meanwhile due
honours to Hoai-tsong as the last emperor of his dynasty. Li-tse-ching,
the rebel chief, still called himself emperor ; and the Chinese had in
vited a great-grandson of Chin-tsong to accept the throne, so that there
was a choice of pretenders. But the Tatars had already got astute
Chinese advisers on their side, or else the historian of the conquest has

THE MING DYNASTY. 251
been careful to give his record the colour most acceptable to the conquered,
for the young Emperor is represented as protesting that it is not he, but the
rebels, who overthrew the Ming Dynasty, and that he had only come to
supplant the traitor and avenge and honour the memory of the last legiti
mate prince.
The distant provinces troubled themselves little about the whole affair,
and it may be doubted whether any preceding dynasty possessed itself so
quickly, and with so little serious opposition, of the whole empire as was
the case with this alien house. The Ming pretender perished like the
last representative of the Sung. An attempt was made to form a party
for another prince of the same house who was strong in Fokien, and the
alliance of the pirate chiefs of the coast was sought against the invaders,
but with no better result than that of encouraging the most formidable of
the pirates in his turn to covet the imperial rank. A militant Buddhist
rallied the patriotic party for a time, but by 1649 all the serious rivals of
the Mantchu Emperor were subdued, and the reigning dynasty entered on
its career.

CHAPTER XXII.
EDUCATION, ART, AND SOCIAL CHANGES UNDER THE MING.
The literature of the Ming Dynasty, in so far as it has been made ac
cessible to European readers, does not throw much additional light upon
the social and economic condition of the people. Philosophic historians,
who had witnessed the expulsion of the Mongols, reproduced in pic
turesque language the doctrine of the alternation of growth and decay,
which was already a commonplace in the time of Ssema-tsien. Nothing
human can last for ever, and no human foresight can guard against the
ever-varying dangers which prove fatal at last to each State or Dynasty in
turn. Even the sages of antiquity had no thought of avoiding this doom
of change, and were content if, by following truth and virtue, they might
earn so much of the blessing of Heaven that the evil days were deferred
to another generation.1 This philosophy was not new in China, but some
practical difference arises when, as now, it is professed by scholars who
find in it an excuse for political inaction, instead of representing the con
clusions of statesmen who, having done their best, discern with rational
stoicism that even the best action has but a finite scope.
The history of the dynasty translated by the Abbe de la Marre gives
more details than De Mailla's work respecting the struggle between the
cultivating peasantry and the " agglomerators " of land in the 15th century,
but unfortunately only half the work was completed, or at least published
before the translator's death. Four lists of the amount of cultivated land
registered for taxation were published under the Ming Dynasty ; the first
in 1370 by order of its founder, and the others respectively in 1502, 1542,
and 15S2. The quantities show a surprising variation;2 and it will be
observed that the minimum is reached in 1502, just at the time when the
revision of the salt monopoly, following the attacks upon agglomeration,
began to encourage the industry of small cultivators.
Complaints of the growth of luxury and extravagance are met with from
time to time, but at least as frequently at the beginning of the dynasty as
1 H. Giles, Gems, pp. 224, 228.
2 1370 a.d. .... 8,496,523 king.
1502 „ . . 4,228,058 „
1542 ,, • • 4.360,582 „
'582 ,  7.oij3976 ,,
The latter area, according to M. Biot's estimate, would be about equivalent to 120
million acres, or a little over 10 acres to a family, according lo a census taken two years
before.

SOCIAL CHANGES UNDER THE MING. 253
later. For instance, we learn from a semi-political skit of the 14th century,
that persons who gave dinner parties, of pretensions beyond their means,
used to hire fruit for dessert, to be looked at, not eaten. A costermonger
was reproached for selling oranges a year old, which had been carefully
kept so as to look fresh and bright outside, though dry and withered within,
and " only fit for show at banquets." The dealer admits the imputation,
and defends himself by observing that they are not more hollow and
worthless than the degenerate rulers of the State ! L The author of this
apologue was attached to the fortunes of Hung-woo, so the custom in
question may have prevailed under the Mongols or earlier.
As a measure of the extent to which the paper money of the Mongols
had been depreciated before their expulsion, we are told that a pound of
rice cost about 6s. in paper. One of the first measures of Tai-tsou-ming
was to issue a new copper money with coins of five different values, but in
less than seven years paper was again resorted to ; the people were forbid
den to use either gold or silver for purposes of exchange, and required to
sell all they had to the Government at its own price in paper ; while pay
ment of taxes was received half in copper and half in the new paper,
which was naturally soon discredited. According to the rates laid down
for the purchase of gold and silver, the value of the former appears as
4 to 1 — a much lower rate than prevailed under the Mongols, when it was
more nearly 10 to 1 ; but as there is nothing to account for an increasing
scarcity of silver, it is probable that the proportion fixed by the edict was
purely arbitrary. Gold not being in ordinary use, either as money or
merchandise, the commerce of the country was not threatened with dis
organization because the holders of gold were, in effect, more heavily
taxed than the larger class possessed of silver.
Copper continued to be cast, and worn-out paper was called in from
time to time, though in 1450, by a supreme absurdity, the use of copper
money itself was prohibited for a time. Base money made of tin was in
circulation, and in 1467 the ordinance of Tai-tsou was revived, requiring
the taxes to be paid half in copper and half in paper. In 1489 a special
edict was directed against the Government officers and other rich indi
viduals who speculated in the Government paper, as the capitalists of the
Tang Dynasty had done in the copper money of the day. As the paper
was virtually inconvertible, and, according to any sound financial system
worthless, it is difficult to see what can have been the inducement to
attempt operations in it. But paper money, however much depreciated,
like copper money, however much debased, can be made at a pinch to
serve the purpose of a medium of exchange ; some such medium was
necessary up to a certain point, though Chinese ingenuity reduced the
necessity to a minimum. And the supply was liable to fall short even of
the modest, irreducible demand, so that if the cultivators had to pay any
part of their taxes in paper, the holders of it could make their own terms.
After this, nothing more is heard of the Ming paper, and little of cur-
1 Giles, Gems, p. 226,

254 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
rency troubles, perhaps because the use, as at present, of uncoined silver
for commercial purposes became general. In the middle of the 16th cen
tury, an emperor is reported to have said that each of his predecessors had
coined copper money to the value of about ^£3,000,000 sterling, and that
he proposed to issue three times that amount. No fresh issues of paper are
mentioned, but the old ones seem to have remained in circulation till they
died a natural death. According to M. Biot, an elementary arithmetic,
published in 1593, speaks of the paper tchao and copper cash as both legal
tender, though the examples given in the work are of such different date
and origin that they give no reliable clue to their comparative value.
At and after this date various regulations were issued respecting the use
of silver in small bars, from which it appears that all attempts to restrain
the use of silver for exchange had been given up. And with the use of
silver in all transactions of importance, of course the demand for copper
became less clamorous ; and the existing supply may have proved fairly
adequate, when its use was restricted to the petty trading of the masses.
The circulation of paper was not formally put a stop to until the present
dynasty, but the subsisting solution, such as it is, of the currency problem
must have been worked out gradually by the unaided ingenuity of the
commercial classes during the last century and a half of Ming rule.
What is regarded as the flourishing period of the Ming Dynasty is shorter
in proportion than that boasted by former lines. It closes soon after the reign
of Yung-lo in 1426, and so comprises less than sixty years. Most of the
edicts respecting the public Examinations and the imperial Colleges, which
continue in force, date from the earlier years of this period. Immediately
after his accession (1368), Tai-tsou founded an imperial college at the then
capital Nanking, and in the following year he issued an edict for the restor
ation of provincial and departmental colleges. A decree of 1370, which
is still in force, declares that " all places of civil officers, whether attached
to the court or to the government of the provinces, must be obtained by
passing the test of examination." This was repealed for a time in 1373,
but definitely re-enacted in 1384 after a short experience of the drawbacks
to promotion by favour. In 1375 village schools after the pattern of the
Rites of Chow were required to be provided, but this decree was never
completely carried out. In 1382 a slight alteration was made in the
allowance of rice assigned for the maintenance of scholars and teachers in
the different district colleges, and grants of newly confiscated lands were
made to the latter, so that they might grow their own grain instead of re
ceiving it periodically from the Government.
The regulations of 1384 show that the examinations had become purely
literary ; law, mathematics, riding, and shooting had dropped out alto
gether, in spite of the anxiety shown by the Emperor to revive the solemn
archery of the Chow, with a view to restoring the military spirit of the
people. The first examination for the degree of Doctor took place at the
capital in 1385,1 together with one of a more arduous character for admis-
1 History has preserved tbe names of these three first Tsin-sse, or doctors.

SOCIAL CHANGES UNDER THE MING. 255
sion to the Han-lin College. Students from Corea, Cochin China, and Japan
resorted to the imperial college, and the sons of officers stationed in the
remoter provinces, like Yunnan and Sz'chuen, were allowed to send their
sons to enjoy the same privileges as foreigners. Special apartments
adjoining the Empress's side of the palace were assigned for the residence of
wives and children of married students. The local colleges were allowed
to send a certain proportion of picked scholars to the imperial es
tablishment, and for some time the ranks of the official hierarchy were
recruited to a considerable extent from amongst the imperial scholars, who
were transferred to a sort of apprenticeship in the various departments,
after which they were qualified for office without examination.
In 1 39 1 Tai-tsou complained that the students learnt by heart stock
pieces of composition, which they wrote out for the examiners as original ;
and the side entrance to office, through the administrative bureaux, had to
be closed to prevent all the imperial students from deserting the colleges
in favour of what they thought an easier road to preferment. Private
examinations of the college students were held, and those who did best
were allowed to compete in the general examination for degrees, while
those who failed were beaten, reprimanded, or dismissed. In the middle
of the 1 6th century the colleges seem to have suffered so much from the-
competition of unattached students assisted by local libraries, that edicts
were passed for the suppression of the latter, but fortunately withdrawn
before being executed.
The number of degrees conferred annually seems to have risen from 500
to over 2,000, and this number was sufficient to meet the wants of
the administration. In the earlier years of the Ming Dynasty, any acting
official could retire from his post in favour of his son and secure the rever
sion to him as a matter of grace. Both provincial governments and court
places were so bequeathed, and officers' sons were also considered to have
a special claim to admission at the colleges ; but these privileges were
gradually curtailed, and in 1595 some members of the imperial family were
required to pass a regular examination before receiving office.
Another abuse, which increased with the financial embarrassments of
the Government, was the bestowal of degrees in return for gifts of money or
grain. In the middle of the 15th century a professor of the Imperial
College protested against students being admitted to the college by
purchase ; and the continuator of Ma-twan-lin waxes eloquent upon the
injury done to the public service when degrees, not merely honorary, but
carrying with them eligibility to official employment, were bestowed upon
men who have only frequented the market-place and cannot even under
stand the literary style. In the account of the first three Tsin-sse, or
doctors, appointed by examination, it appears that each received a special
title and had a special duty assigned to him in which his literary attain
ments, would find full scope. The first on the list was employed to revise
the works prepared for publication, while the second and third revise the
official editions of works which have been published before. On this

256 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
occasion a fourth officer was also appointed as " Collector of docu
ments." Mention is made of an interesting foundation of the 16th century called
the " Temple of emperors and kings ; " it contained the tablets of all good
emperors, irrespective of dynasty ; the tyrants, enemies to liberty, and
usurpers were excluded, — a rule of selection which, with appropriate
modifications, probably prevailed in the analogous monuments of Egypt,
like the famous tablet of Abydos of Seti I.
Art as well as literature profited by the internal peace which prevailed
under the native dynasty, and the sites of the most famous porcelain works
were fortunately at a safe distance from the disturbed frontiers. The china
made during the reign of the usurper Yung-lo is counted as the third best
of the dynasty. The reign of his grandson (1426-35) is the period from
which the finest dates. Deep red and sky-blue vases, tea-cups of pure white
with exquisite paintings, choice specimens of crackle and enamel and
pieces of the most varied colour and design were produced by the artists of
the day, and all were equally excellent of their kind. Imperial patronage
contributed a good deal to the development of the art : a kind of porcelain
known as " magistrates' china " being now made for the first time, by pro
cesses too costly to be tried at the expense of private individuals. Early
in the Sung Dynasty (1004-7), pottery was first made at King-te-tching, the
site of the present Imperial factory, which was established by Hung-woo in
the second year of his reign.
All the famous artists of this period are known by name. One Lo
(1426-35) was celebrated for his representations of cricket fights ; and two
sisters, the elder and the younger Sieou, excelled at the same time in
making cups engraved with similar subjects. Between 1465 and 1487 two
artists flourished, one of whom excelled in wine cups, while the other made
jars ornamented with hens, or with a peony in flower above and group of
hen and chickens like life below. Early in the following century, a
governor of Yunnan obtained cobalt blue from foreign parts for twice its
weight in gold; and the china of this period (1506-1521), known as
Tching-te, painted in blue, is justly valued by collectors.
In the middle half of the 16th century, 1522-72, an artist known as the
venerable Tsoui was famous for imitations of the best work of the preced
ing century ; his pieces were in request all over the empire. A little later,
one of the most illustrious artists of the dynasty settled at King-te-tching.
The price at which his largest masterpieces are stated to have been sold
may have been equivalent to ,£1000 of modern money, but this was either
a collector's extravagance or perhaps a rhetorical phrase. We are told as a
fact that a sum equivalent, at the same rate of reckoning, to ,£40 was
given him for a copy of an ancient tripod, undistinguishable from the
original, which he made after a single inspection.
In the same period another artist was famous for his reproductions of
the work of the elder Tchang, one of two brothers, who flourished early
in the Sung Dynasty, and were famous for vases mostly of a pale blue

SOCIAL CHANGES UNDER THE .MING. 257
colour, but differing from each other in the enamel and crackle. Not less
highly esteemed was the work of a poetical potter, who called himself
" The old man who lives in retirement," a signature x which appears on
all his works ; some of these were of white egg-shell china, others
brilliant red, some again blue, like those of the elder Tchang, but without
crackle, and others purple and dead-leaf colour.
By a curious refinement of dilettantism, the colour of choice cups was
designed to blend with that of the liquid for which they were used, so
that the description of their beauties always specifies, not merely the
colour of the cup when empty, but also the shade which appears when it
is filled, with tea or wine as the case may be. The imitations of Chinese
designs in Persian pottery, with vague scrawls to represent Chinese
characters, probably belong for the most part to this dynasty ; and their
existence shows that the overland export trade in porcelain must have
reached a considerable development, to introduce the fashion for forgeries
in a country with a vigorous native art of its own.
It is a curious question, which perhaps a further investigation of Chinese
texts might clear up, how far the Tatar clamour for official horse-markets
was due to a falling off in the natural Chinese demand for them for use,
or how far the use of horses was deliberately discouraged because the
trade in them brought their aggressive breeders within the frontier. Other
causes may have co-operated. Semedo remarks upon the substitution of
litters for carriages about 1546, — -the time when the latter came into use
in Spain and Italy; and the Jesuits tell us that the palanquin was thought
more dignified than the saddle. The age was on the whole one of peace
and luxury, and Chinese officials no doubt were already adopting the
sedentary habits which they still retain. On the other hand, population
was increasing, and native economists may have begun to grudge to quad
rupeds, especially those used only for war or ostentation, the food which
is available for mankind.2 The horse had never been generally used for
agriculture, and the abuses connected with the official studs may have
tended to discredit their use by private persons. But all these causes
together seem scarcely sufficient to account for so considerable a change
of old and widespread custom, as is involved in the disuse of wheeled
carriages for pleasure and ceremony in a country with high roads.
The fact seems to be that the horse was never really naturalized in
China. Semedo says that, though plentiful, they appear tame and spirit
less; and our friend the anarchist, Chuang-tze, has explained why:
" Horses have hoofs to carry them over frost and snow; hair to protect
them from wind and cold. They eat grass and drink water, and fling up
their heels over the champaign. Such is the real nature of horses.
1 Ou-ni-tao-jin.
2 Sir Thomas More admits few horses to Utopia for this reason ; and it will be
remembered that in ancient Egypt the use of carriage animals was long unknown and
never common. The cost of their maintenance was felt the more sensibly in China
from the hahit, which strikes foreigners as odd, of feeding quadrupeds on " vegetables "
(among which rice was probably included), identical with those used for human food.
VOL. II. — P.C. S

258 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
Palatial dwellings are of no use to them. One day Poh-Loh appeared,
saying, ' I understand the management of horses.' So he branded them,
and clipped them, and pared their hoofs, and put halters on them, tying
them up by the head and shackling them by the feet, and disposing them
in stables, with the result that two or three in every ten died. Then he
kept them hungry and thirsty, trotting them and galloping them, and
grooming and trimming, with the misery of the tasseled bridle before and
the fear of the knotted whip behind, until more than half of them were
dead. . . . Nevertheless, every age extols Poh-Loh for his skill in
managing horses."1
If horses failed to thrive in the days of the Warring States, when waste
lands were still plentiful, and grass not quite unknown, we scarcely need
any further explanation of the mortality among them when the increase
of population turned the natural wastes into corn and rice fields, and
horses had to be shut up, not to please the fancy of their grooms, but
because there was no place left where they could "kick up their heels "
without damage. Whether it be that an exclusive diet of grain disagrees
with them, and that, failing grass, horses must have hay, or that they can
not stand being stabled in the climate of China, it seems clear that it
grew more and more difficult to keep them alive. They died fast and did
not breed, so that the numbers required for use had to be kept up by
importations from Tatary, Corea, and other less closely cultivated lands.
Under the Tang Dynasty, a fatal epidemic, which destroyed many, was
introduced by the animals brought in tribute by the Tatars and said to be
the result of change of climate.
For some time, however, as we have seen, the horse trade with Tatary
was not conducted on a purely commercial footing ; while nominally
paying tribute in horses, the Tatars were virtually receiving it in tea and
silk ; and while utilizing the horse fairs to obtain a footing in China, they
had not the smallest desire to keep the empire efficiently supplied with
the animals they claimed the right to sell. It was said that when the
Yuen had to retreat before the founder of the Ming Dynasty, they actually
had not horses enough for use in their flight; and if this was the case
with the Mongols, who had made the care of their steeds an oppression
to the people, much more would the number naturally decline under a
pacific native dynasty.
The introduction of horses after the discovery of America led to a
marked distinction between the Indian tribes with and without these
animals ; and, no doubt, a detailed history of China would show a variety
of indirect consequences following from their disuse. The decay of the
1 Chuang-tzu, p. 106. The author concludes his allegory : " Those who govern the
empire make the same mistake. . . . Horses live on dry land, eat grass, and drink
water. \Vhen pleased, they rub their necks together. When angry, they turn round and
kick up their heels at each other. Thus far only do their natural dispositions carry them.
But bridled and bitted, with a plate of metal on their foreheads, they learn to cast vicious
looks, to turn the head to bite, to resist, to get the bit out of the mouth, or the bridle
into it. And thus their natures become depraved — the fault of Poh-Loh."

SOCIAL CHANGES UNDER THE MING. 259
high roads is certainly one, which has produced injurious political results,
and would threaten others, but for the counteracting influence of telegraph
wires now, and possibly railways before long. Whether expedient or not,
the change was almost a matter of necessity : the present enormous popu
lation of China could not be maintained at all, to say nothing of main
tained at its present standard of modest comfort, were it not for the
extreme economy in the use of the national food stuffs, rendered possible
by the scarcity of large graminivorous live-stock.

CHAPTER XXIII.
FOREIGN ACCOUNTS OF CHINA UNDER THE MING.
A sudden lull in the intercourse between China and the West follows the
expulsion of the Mongols. The ravages of Tamerlane compelled the
traders of Europe to seek an opening for their enterprise in other regions
of the world than Central Asia. The power of the Turks formed another
barrier, and we have to wait till the 16 th century, when the attractions
of the new Western continent began to pall, for a sort of rediscovery of
China, as a great kingdom accessible by the Indian seas; followed by a
slow and dubious recognition of the northern part of the kingdom, also
accessible by land, as identical with the far-famed Cathay of Marco Polo
and other early travellers.
The ambassadors sent by Shah Rukh, as previously mentioned, in 141 9,
state that two virgins stood on each side of the throne, with paper and
pencils to take down every word spoken by the Emperor : a trait which
recalls the employment of women in place of eunuchs at the end of
the Tang Dynasty. Only one other report, of so much as second-hand
authority, comes to us during the interval. A Venetian gentleman,1 who
first started for Tana in 1436, after long mercantile experience of these
distant parts, was sent, in 147 1, as ambassador to Persia. There he was
told, in answer to inquiries, that Samarcand was the great mart for those
who came from Cini, Macini, and Cataio. He himself did not proceed
farther, but he heard from many that Chin and Machin were very great
provinces, the place whence porcelains, silk wares, and such choice goods
were brought. Through them you go to Cathay, and he was told by a
Tatar ambassador, whom he saw afterwards at Tana, that, when you enter
Cathay, all expenses of the merchants are defrayed and they are brought
to a place called Cambalu, where they prostrate themselves before the
lord, and tell their business, which is then referred to the nobles, who
promptly settle it. The lord takes what he pleases of the merchant's
wares, giving more than its value, and they sell the rest. " A land of
liberty and great justice ; " paper money is in use.
These rumours are only of interest as showing that there was no
material change in the attitude of the Chinese Government towards such
foreign traders as reached the empire, during this period of comparative
isolation. The freedom of trade, enjoyed by Arabs and Italians under
the Tang and Sung Dynasties, was not refused by China ; it was only not
claimed, on account of obstacles quite outside the reach of her influence.
1 Ramusio, ii. p. 106.
260

FOREIGN ACCOUNTS OF CHINA UNDER THE MING. 261
The commercial colonies of Mahomedans and Jews already settled in
China were practically cut off from their countrymen and co-religionists,
and were regarded as naturalized Chinese.
China had commerce enough of her own to thrive by, and the foreign
ships were scarcely missed ; but the habit of hospitality to sea-borne
foreigners was interrupted in the South, just at the time when, from other
causes, it seemed necessary to exercise a strict control of the overland
traffic, which knocked at the Northern gate of the Empire. Had the trade
of Western Europe and Asia been able to come in any volume by this
route, the conditions of foreign traffic would have been regulated to meet
its needs ; as it was, though the Tatars were not absolutely the only traders
desirous of offering a well-rewarded tribute, they were the nearest, the
most numerous, and the most dangerous, and therefore the general course
of trade was controlled in the way that seemed best adapted to keep the
Tatars at once at a distance and in a good temper.
Portuguese ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope were the first to
re-enter the China seas. In 15 17 a fleet of eight sail reached Canton, bear
ing an ambassador, with presents for the Emperor of China. They passed
peaceably through the Chinese naval force, then stationed outside the
Canton River to protect merchant vessels from piracy, and the provincial
authorities, though cautious, were not unfriendly. The Portuguese were
allowed to dispose of their wares while awaiting a reply from Peking, as to
the proposed embassy. This was delayed till 1520, and, meanwhile, the
naval commander had been induced, by sickness among the sailors, to
return to Malacca. Before his departure, he satisfied the claims of all
Chinese creditors against members of the expedition, thus at once securing
a reputation for good faith, which, if kept up, would in all human proba
bility have established free trade with China three centuries and a half
ago. Unfortunately, a brother of the first commander, who was placed at
the head of the second expedition, was a more typical representative of
Portuguese commercial enterprise. He set at defiance all the laws and
regulations of the country, despised its ceremonies, and while nominally
desirous of establishing peaceful intercourse, actually displayed the greed
of an invader and the insolence of a conqueror. Small wonder then that
the emperor, who had just accomplished his visit to Nanking, was prepared
to believe the warnings, which reached his viceroys from Bintang and
Malacca, that the Portuguese sought to obtain admission as traders, in
order that they might conquer China, as they had already conquered its
tributary, the king of Malacca, and those parts of India in which they had
obtained a lodgment. The suspicion was perfectly well founded. Portu
gal, Spain, Holland, and England in succession cast their eyes on China,
as a finer prey than any to be found in the Indies, east or west ; and the
Chinese have only themselves and a wary Government to thank for their
escape from the fate of Spanish America, British India, and the shorter-
lived Dutch and Portuguese settlements.

262 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
The annals of Canton say that the king of Portugal, a country in the
Western ocean, sent an ambassador to China in 1525, and another, with
tribute, in 1528. The Memoirs of Mendez Pinto,1 whose buccaneering
exploits date about 1540, are enough to explain why these new tribute-
bearers seemed to require to be as much kept at a distance as the Tatars.
But with the best will in the world, their numbers were too small to make
them really a formidable annoyance to the already enormous empire, and
hence it is that the question, of admitting or excluding the Western islanders,
occupies much less space in the official annals than the problem of tolerat
ing horse fairs. Apart from the personal rhodomontade which has dis
credited them, the author of the Memoirs just referred to seems to be fairly
veracious, so far as bis Chinese experiences are concerned.
Piracy, with a slight flavour of commerce, was the profession of himself
and the comrades with whom he entered the China seas. After various
discreditable adventures, they were wrecked, after an attempt to loot an
imperial cemetery, and it was in consequence of this mishap that they were
able to see as much as they did of inland China. They endeavoured to
make their way by road to Nanking, where they hoped to get a vessel for
Ningpo, and as long as the foreigners were able to persuade the country
people that they were unfortunate sailors and not pirates, they were helped
on their way by private and public charity. In a town where the officials
were more suspicious or better informed, they were arrested as bad
characters, and completed their journey as prisoners. From Nanking they
were transferred to the capital for judgment, and we are able again to view
the Chinese highways with a European eye.
The interval that separates Chaucer from Shakespeare has made little
difference to the Middle Kingdom. Pinto repeats the tale of all earlier
travellers. China is "the country in the world most abounding in all
things that may be desired. The roads and waterways are lined with great
numbers of villages and little hamlets of two or three hundred fires apiece ;
woods and orange groves, plains of wheat, rice, beans, pease, millet, panic,
barley, rye, flax, and cotton, and gardens and houses of pleasure " succeed
each other. In one town, with a water supply that is supposed to yield the
brightest hues for dyeing silk, he is told that there are 13,000 dyers at
work, who pay 300,000 taels yearly to the Emperor (say about ^100,000).
As they proceed up the river, the country grows more and more populous ;
pagodas stood within a stone's throw of each other, and for the last eleven
days "cities, towns, villages, boroughs, forts and castles, not a flight shot
distant from one another," gave the Portuguese the same impression of
Northern China in the 16th century, as had been carried away from
Southern China by the Arab travellers of the 9th and the 14th centuries.
The specialization of employments struck Pinto as carried to a remark
able extent. Every kind of traffic and commerce is divided into several
branches ; thus, in the trade in ducks, some hatch the eggs and sell the
ducklings, others fatten them for eating ; some sell the eggs only, others
1 Voyages and Adventures of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, tr. by H. C. Gent, 1663.

FOREIGN ACCOUNTS OF CHINA UNDER THE MING. 263
the feathers, and so on. He notices the brisk trade in town sewage, by
means of which, used as manure, their grounds bear three crops in a year.
He recognises as one chief cause of the great wealth and commerce of
China, the multiplicity of rivers and artificial waterways, to the construc
tion of which ancient kings, great lords, and the people themselves have in
all times contributed, so as to render the whole country navigable, and
enable all paits to communicate and exchange the produce of their
labour. Even the pagodas help to promote traffic, for fairs and markets are free
on religious festivals ; and the temples, erected on the river banks to profit
by the consequent concourse, enable the people to do their business and
their devotion under one. He sums up, that after having seen great part
of Asia, as well as his own country and other lands, hg would set China
by itself above the whole of Europe for abundance, riches, and magnifi
cence, and most of all for the exact observance of justice, "for there is so
well ruled a government in this country as it may justly be envied of all
others in the world."
In 1560 the Portuguese obtained leave to rent a site for their factory
at Macao, and before long 500 or 6pg merchants of that nation were
established there. By 1565 the missionaries had also effected an entry,
and the zeal of the religious orders for the conversion of China was much
stimulated by the reports of success already obtained among the similar
people of Japan. Mendoza's history of China is a compilation, first pub
lished in 1585,1 to which his own short residence in China enabled him
to contribute comparatively little of his own knowledge, The process of
making porcelain is not described amiss, and he mentions the use of large
visiting cards, as now, and other since familiar characteristics.
Otherwise, he does little but summarize and combine the accounts given
at first hand by Galeotto Perera and his fellow-rcaptive, Gaspar da Cruz, a
preaching friar, who resided in China between 1556 and 1569, and
published an account of his experiences on his return to Portugal.3 Da
Cruz is probably to be identified with the over-zealous monk, who nearly
got into trouble, according to Mendoza, by throwing down images in an
"idol" temple, but saved himself by a rationalistic discourse on the im
potence of idols, which should rather be expected to worship their maker,
man, than conversely. He speaks of all the foreign traffic in Canton,
putting together that of the Portuguese and all that came from Siam, as
insignificant when compared with the local and national trade. Other
writers dilate on the enormous revenue derived by the Emperor from the
provinces ; but he is more struck by the smallness of the individual tax
payer's contributions, the chief of which is a poll-tax of qd., paid by the
heads of households for the members of their family.3 It is a land where
1 Translated by the Hakluyt Society. For an account of the trade with Cathay, by a
Turkish Dervish, circ. 1560, see Busbequii Epistoliz, pp. 326-30.
2 In Black Letter 4° ; a Tradado, containing many particularities concerning things
Chinese, translated in Purchas, his Pilgrims, vol. iii.
8 Mendoza puts this tax at about half as much again.

264 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
every one works, and all are free to enjoy and bequeath their own earnings
as they please. Prices, it would seem, have not risen much since he wrote,
for he speaks of shoes to be bought at from two crowns each to threepence ;
boots vary from ten crowns to two, and the good friar evidently regards
the variation as a popular trait : " even the very poor may wear shoes."
He experienced the '¦ great courtesy " of the Chinese in his own person,
and apparently rather admired the custom of not receiving friends in
" undress." He is introduced to the "somewhat bitter, red, and medicinal
drink called Cha " (tea), and during his thirteen years' intercourse with the
Chinese, certainly gained a degree of familiarity with their institutions and
modes of thought, which must have made Ricci's task less difficult. One
of his statements must be the less omitted because of its singularity ; he
says : " the merchants are commonly false, and lyars," — a complaint which
the Jesuits echo at rare intervals,1 though their general evidence is the
other way. Probably, such Portuguese as may have tried to engage in a
cheating match with the idolaters, were left with a livelier sense of the
moral obliquity of cheating as their sole gain from the adventure.
Mendoza's authorities have a tolerably clear understanding of the
position of the literary class, or " a certain order of gentlemen called
Loutea." Offices are given for merit, not descent; but, it is added,
correctly, while the higher offices of justice are bestowed "after trial made
of their learning," the lower posts in the administration, as of "constables,
sergeants, receivers and the like " are given by favour. No man governs
in his native place, or for more than three years, so that the king is well
served without fear of treason. There are no nobles, as in Europe and
Japan, except the emperor's kinsmen, and these are not allowed to take
any part in public affairs. They take all possible pains to avoid condemn
ing any to death, and it is thought cruel to issue more than six or eight
death-warrants at a time, though prisoners liable to sentence of death, who
are not executed, and who have no friends to pay for their support, are
in danger of being allowed to die of starvation instead.
The system of reports to the Emperor, and of periodical visits of inspec
tion by his delegates, is well understood, and the custom of offering all
memorials or petitions in writing is also noticed.2 The Mandarin dialect
is compared to Latin, as the common language of the learned; but Tri-
gault is the first to explain that it is the written character only that
approaches to the nature of an "universal language." According to
Perera, the Government examinations and the periodical gaol deliveries
were done by the same officers on circuit. He was told that many of the
students were maintained at the emperor's expense,3 and he made the
acquaintance in gaol of some who had been disgraced for failing to pass
their examinations. Like Pinto, he is filled with admiration for the way
in which justice was administered in the Chinese courts; and as the
1 De Mailla, vol. xiii. p. 676.
2 This practice is said to date from 964 A.D.
3 I.e. in the Government colleges.

FOREIGN ACCOUNTS OF CHINA UNDER THE MING. 265
experience of both was gained as prisoners, their evidence is sufficiently
impartial. Apparently Perera's party had fallen under the suspicion, which in
Pinto's case was justified, of being merchants in pretence and pirates in
practice. They resisted by force the attempt made to capture them, and
some Chinese were killed in the mele'e, so that there were two counts in
the indictment, — first, that of piracy, and secondly, that of resisting the
officers of justice. After the usual delays and exchange of letters with
Peking it was decided that the Portuguese were honest merchants, and the
officials who accused them unjustly of being otherwise were punished and
disgraced ; but the leaders of the resistance who had taken the lives of
two Chinamen were found guilty of that offence, and sentenced to die
whenever Chinese justice might find convenient.
Perera thinks that the great security of justice was the publicity of the
trials; no witnesses would dare to perjure themselves coram populo ; but
he also describes with admiration how the " loutea," great men as they
are, " be patient above measure in giving audience ; " in another place he
speaks of the Chinese as " more ready in their dealings, after their manner,
than any other Gentiles or Moors." And it is probably to their own share
of this " readiness," mixed with a little dignified self-respect, that the
prisoners were indebted to the substantial justice they received. " We
might say what we would," continues Perera, and notwithstanding the
omission of the usual ceremonies (of prostration), " yet did they bear with
us so patiently that they caused us to wonder, knowing specially how little
any advocate or judge is wont in our country to bear with us."
Unknown men, however innocent, so accused in any town of Christen
dom, would, he thought, have had good reason to fear the end ; but here
they, in a heathen country, without interpreters or knowledge of the lan
guage, and accused by two chief officers of the place, "did in the end see
our great adversaries cast into prison for our sakes and deprived of their
offices and honours for not doing justice, yea, not to escape death, for as
the rumour goeth they shall be beheaded."
All these writers understand that by Chinese law natives cannot leave,
nor foreigners reside in the country, without a special license, hard and
costly to obtain ; but this seemed to be rather by ancient custom than im
memorial law, and the attachment of the modern Chinaman to his pigtail
shows that a custom can obtain more than the force of law during the
reign of one dynasty.
The Augustinians and the Franciscans made abortive attempts to get a
footing in the empire, which all felt sure of converting could they only
reach it. Father Alessandro da Valignano, who was in charge of the latter
expedition, describes the administration of the great Empire as going on
so smoothly and easily as to resemble rather that of a small, well-behaved
family than a large State. Idleness is tolerated in no class except the
priests, and he observes, rather aptly, that though tolerated, their idleness
is the chief reason of the contempt in which they are held. He notices

266 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
with surprise that after forty years' intercourse the Portuguese have made
no progress, and are still confined to one part of Canton ; and gives as a
proof of the Chinese distrust or dread of foreigners that the Portuguese
have not here, as elsewhere, succeeded in establishing any private relations
of friendship with the natives ; but it is perhaps an open question which
of the two nations is most discredited by the fact.
In 1580 and 1583, as already mentioned, the two first Jesuit missionaries
arrived in China, and henceforward it is hardly necessary to look else
where, than in the records of that order, for side-lights upon Chinese cus
toms and history. Matteo Ricci, the real chief and founder of the mission,
had landed in 1583. His Lehr Jahre may be said to have lasted for ten
years. In 1593 he adopted the dress of the literati ; the first unequivocal
sign of the intelligent sympathy which has made the Jesuit Fathers such
valuable interpreters of things Chinese ; and in 1601, by way of appropriate
reward, his (Chinese) name meets us in the Annals. Europeans who flour
ish after 1648 cannot know, until the fall of the Mantchu Dynasty discloses
the records of its historiographers, what the calm verdict of Chinese his
tory will put on record in the way of " righteous decisions," concerning
them and their deeds. A special interest therefore attaches to the brief
mention made from time to time of Li-ma*teou (Matteo Ri) and his
friends, showing exactly how much space in proportion the good Father
occupied in his adopted country.
" At the second month of the year 1601,' the eunuch Ma-tang of Tien
tsin caused Li-ma-teou, a European, who had rare objects to offer to the
emperor, to be conducted to court. The memorial of the eunuch " (ask
ing permission to make the offering) " was referred to the Board of
Rites, which replied : ' Europe has no relations with us and is not subject
to our laws. The images or pictures of the Lord of Heaven and of a
virgin which Li-ma-teou offers in tribute are not of great value. He pre
sents a purse which he says contains the bones of immortals, as if the im
mortals, in rising to heaven, did not take their bones with them. Upon a
similar occasion Han-yu said that such novelties should not be introduced
into the palace for fear of evil consequences. We decide that these pre
sents should not be accepted, and that Li-ma-teou should not be allowed
to remain at court ; let him be sent back to his own country,'"
Notwithstanding this report, the emperor received the presents and
allowed the missionary to remain at court, The fact is that, besides his
devotional pictures and reliquaries, Ricci had brought a novelty that was
objectionable, if at all, on other grounds. It was a clock that struck the
hours ; clocks and watches that merely marked the. time were apparently
already known, but the emperor was fascinated by this new invention,
which gave tongue mysteriously of its own accord at the appointed time
without having anything done to it. Such a present was not to be refused ;
on the contrary, in flagrant defiance of the classic lessons of the '' Hounds
of Lu," a tower, costing 1,300 crowns, was built to accomniodate the clock,
> De Mailla, *. p, 39Q,

FOREIGN ACCOUNTS OF CHINA UNDER THE MING. 267
and the foreigner who brought it was allowed to reside at the capital, so
as to be at hand in case it should get out of order.
In 1613 the President of the Nanking Board of Works, a Christian con
vert, is said in the Annals to have recommended " certain strangers from
Europe " as qualified to correct the calendar, which had got into such a
-state that eclipses of the sun and moon were not correctly foretold. This
recommendation is reported without note or comment ; but in 1629 a simi
lar recommendation by another high officer, the Christian known as Paul
in the writings of the missionaries, is followed by the nomination of four
Europeans, whose names are given, as members of the Board of Astronomy,
in which capacity, the annalist adds, " they distinguished themselves."
The account of the mission published by Father Nicholas Trigault, in
1615, is not exactly either a life of Ricci or a description of China ; it is
professedly based on Ricci's memoirs, and it may embody all the informa
tion he had collected, and it is at the same time the best account that
exists of his personal work. Trigault gives some account of the Chinese
classics and of " Confutius," and the honour in which his posterity are
still held. Mahomedan astronomers were employed as well as Chinese ;
the whole art of medicine, he thinks, would be included in the European
science of botany. But no one who is capable of " philosophy " would
study either medicine or astronomy. The education of the young is
carried on mainly by private tutors, not in public schools ; and Semedo
explains that unsuccessful candidates for degrees become teachers while
waiting to try again. Rich families employ the successful licentiates who
are still pursuing their studies with a view to the degree of Doctor, a dig
nity which those who take office at once are not entitled to go in for.
The examinations are described at length, At the second examination
of bachelors, the second day's task consists either of three essays on set
historical questions, or a memorial to the Emperor as to the course to be
taken in a case proposed.
The doctrine of the literati is described as the first of the three " re
ligions" of the Chinese. This sect has no temples except that to Con
fucius; filial piety and the commemoration of ancestors are the corner
stone, but the ceremonies are intended for the benefit of the living rather
than the dead. The aim of this sect and the purport of all its precepis
is to secure " public peace, popular tranquillity, household economy, and
the disposition of individuals to the practice of virtue." Ricci devoted
himself to confuting the other two sects of idolaters (Buddhists and Tao
ists), but as to the literati, so far from blaming, he extolled their doctrine
highly and gave warm praise to Confucius, who was silent concerning
those things of which he was ignorant, such as a future life, and adjusted
all the precepts of his law, to the regulation of the individual life, and ihe
government of the family and the kingdom according to truth and justice.
These discoveries took time, and nearly ten years passed before Ricci
and his companions abandoned the dress of the despised Buddhist priests.
The use and significance of the Chinese " tones" does not seem to have

268 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
been understood till after the first visit to Peking, though it is evident
that without such knowledge intercourse must have been carried on very
much by guess.
Trigault's description of Chinese manners and customs is the first of
those containing the full details which have become so familiar since.
There has been so little change during three centuries that modern
travellers might substitute a reference to his pages for most of their descrip
tions. The use of cotton, he was informed, had been introduced only
about 400 years before, and that of tea also was not very ancient. As to
the arrangement of native feasts, civilities, dress, new year's ceremonies,
marriages, coffins, the duties of magistrates and censors, the superstitions
of Feng-shwuy or geomancy, the state of arts and manufactures, and similar
topics, Trigault forestalls Semedo and Duhalde, to say nothing of 19th
century writers like Doolittle, Williams, and Archdeacon Gray, on most
points as to which he and they had not already been forestalled by Da
Cruz and Perera.
Trigault conjectures that the jealousy of foreigners dates mainly from
the time of Mongol supremacy, while it was fostered by the Mahomedans
at Canton, who did not wish the benefits of naturalization, obtained by
themselves at the cost of expatriation, to be depreciated through their
extension to non-resident traders. About 1618, when the attacks of the
Tatars became menacing, the Portuguese offered to send a force of
artillery to the emperor's assistance, and the offer was favourably regarded
at Peking. Fortunately, however, for China, who has always military
adventurers enough of her own, intrigues at Canton proved fatal to the
project, and the mercenaries were dismissed with thanks and pay without
having been employed.
While Ricci was still in the South, a memorial of the local elders was
drawn up against the admission of foreigners, and produced an edict the
politeness of which is a curiosity iri the history of what passes for religious
persecution. Ricci and his friends were considerately invited to return to
their own country ; he had not, it was explained, entered the Empire of
China with any evil intent, and had not done anything contrary to the
laws, yet he should not forget his own country, seeing that it is possible to
live religiously in every place, — while it is not proper for a stranger to
reside for long in the chief town of the vice-royalty ! Therefore, the edict
proceeds to explain, it is not unjust or discourteous to send him back to
his own people ; as to the expense he has been at in building houses,
it cannot be denied that it is considerable, but on the other hand, as
the money so employed was given him as alms, he cannot claim it as
belonging to him personally by right. Nevertheless, in addition to the
money furnished by the magistrate for his journey, I (says the Viceroy in
his own person) will give him fifteen crowns of my own, so that he shall
have sixty crowns in all, and therewith be sent back to his own country !
The author of this touching appeal to the good sense and good feeling of
the virtuous barbarian was seriously hurt and annoyed by Ricci's refusal

FOREIGN ACCOUNTS OF CHINA UNDER IHE MING. 269
to accept the money ; but, curiously enough, he did not insist on his going
with or without compensation, and allowed him to settle somewhere else.
Ricci's introduction to the Chinese court has already been described.
Ma-tang, the eunuch, who overruled the Board of Rites on the subject of
his admission, had no more friendly purpose than to " squeeze " the
foreigner, and get some credit with the emperor by introducing him to new
toys. Such an introduction was calculated to strengthen the prejudice
against the stranger entertained to begin with by the orthodox magistracy ;
but Ricci had the wit to free himself as soon as possible from the compro
mising patronage, and made his excuses, not unacceptably, to the learned.
He reminded them that even the highest magistrates found it difficult to
resist the undue influence of the eunuchs ; what wonder, then, that a poor
foreigner should be unable to avoid some breaches of propriety under the
same pressure? In 1605 the Fathers were permitted to buy a house in
Peking, and were actually allowed exemption from taxes like the literati.
The identification of Peking, the capital of China, with Cambalu, the
capital of Cathay, was not effected till 1608, when the Jesuits in China
received the account of their lay coadjutor's journey and death at the
entrance of the empire. Benedict Goes started from India expressly to
ascertain whether the Cathay, of which Mahomedan traders at the court
of Akbar had so much to say, was a separate empire from the not less
famous land of China, where the order had already established itself. He
started on the journey across Central Asia in 1604, saw Khotan, till the
other day, as then, " the most central and inaccessible State of all Asia."
At this time seven or eight of the kingdoms of Western Asia were
allowed to send ambassadors to China, to the number of seventy-two every
six years, who in return for their presents received money and more
valuable gifts. A Mahomedan merchant told Akbar that he had been
admitted in the character of an ambassador from the king of Cashgar.
Trade was the real object of the embassies, and it was probably owing to
his want of skill in maintaining the character of a merchant that Goes was
delayed at the frontier, after he had learnt from a return caravan that he
would find his brethren at Peking. The latter part of the journey between
Turfan and Hami and the Chinese frontier was at this time considered the
most dangerous, owing to the Tatar raids.
Goes was able to communicate with Ricci by letter, and a Chinese
Christian was sent to meet him and arrange for his admission, but only
arrived in time to comfort the gallant traveller's lasf days. Ricci compares
the " palace of foreigners," where these mongrel embassies were lodged, to
unfurnished sheep-pens, and he successfully established his own status as a
private person, drawn to the capital by a disinterested admiration for the
Emperor's virtues and the learning of the Middle Kingdom. His death in
1610, after some anxious negotiations, resulted in one of the greatest
victories yet achieved by the mission. Somewhere or other within the
empire, every person of condition has a share in some family burial-ground,
to which, wherever he may die, his children will dutifully convey his coffin.

2 70 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
Intra-mural interments had long been forbidden by the sanitary intui
tions of the law, and foreigners could not buy land outside the towns, any
more than houses within them, without a license by no means to be
counted on. It was therefore quite as difficult for a foreigner to be buried
decorously in China as to reside there openly. After his death, Ricci's
status as a friendly foreigner of eminence was again expounded by his
representatives; the distance from his own country was shown to be such
that his friends were not unreasonable in shrinking from the journey in
volved in bearing his remains to their proper resting-place among his own
people ; and out of regard for his personal character and these weighty
and exceptional circumstances, the imperial sanction was given to his
interment in Chinese soil. After the question of principle was decided
the rest was easy, and a small farm, belonging to a disgraced eunuch, was
given to the Jesuits for a burial-ground.
Semedo's account of China is dated from Goa in 1638 ;x he mentions a
few traits that had escaped Trigault, but, like him, is substantially in accord
with all later travellers. He admires the horticultural skill of the Chinese,
and their use of hot water-pipes to force the growth of plants. The
pleasure boats which abound on the lake Si-hou seem by his account to
have been more usually private property than now. The very numerous
barbers, he explains, are not employed to shave, but to comb and dress the
hair, which both men and women allow to grow long, whence the name by
which they call themselves, of " the black-haired people." He also notices
those advantages of the Chinese method of block-printing which have since
led to the adoption of the modern "stereotype edition." He contrasts, as
other writers have done, the abundance of all things for use with the thrift
that suffers nothing to be wasted, even rags and bones being carefully
gathered and sorted for manure. He connects the low prices which pre
vail with the scarcity of money, and compares both with the state of things
in the reign of John I. of Castille, or the old days in Portugal when, for
one maravedi, worth six sols, six different things could be bought.
In the south of China, where commerce was most active, and money
therefore least scarce, prices, he observes, tend to rise. In large trans
actions, silver only is used as a medium of exchange, and its purity is care
fully tested ; but to purchase trifling provisions, he expressly says that base
money is as good as the purest, which proves that under the Ming, as we
have already surmised to be the case in earlier times, the false coiners did
little more than supplement with inconvertible tokens a really insufficient
currency. Semedo describes with as much admiration as an "Old Resident,"
at Canton three hundred years later, the " inviolable fidelity with which
the Chinese merchants fulfil their business engagements," and this in spite
of the great facilities for fraud offered by the fact that the Portuguese were
obliged to give in advance to the native agents the money with which the
latter make purchases on account of the foreigners in different parts of the
T'h?ri°r- Ricci complained that money forwarded for his use through
the virtUOu * Relatione della gran monorchia delta Cina.

FOREIGN ACCOUNTS OF CHINA UNDER THE MING. 271
Chinese agents did not always, come to hand; but Semedo, on the contrary,
met with kindness as well as honesty : for more than once, as strangers
from a distant region, the Fathers had money lent to them without interest.
Our author endeavours to interpret the Chinese feeling as to the close
connection between good manners and good morals. "They believe," he
says, "that no virtue is more important than courtesy, an appearance of
composure, and to do things with circumspection, reserve, and mature
judgment, all which they express under all circumstances and at all times
by the word Li." The maxim to which chiefly they attribute the duration
of the empire is that which recommends that the community should be
RICH, AND ITS MEMBERS POOR.
He goes on that, it is true, those who pass for rich in China would not
be so considered in Europe ; but, on the other hand, the poor are not so
necessitous. Semedo enumerates three causes which facilitate the collec
tion of the taxes in China, and these also are connected with the funda
mentally democratic character of the Constitution. They are, first, " that
the officers, great and small, are not so absolute as ours ;'' secondly, that
"the cultivators live in the fields, not in towns or villages," by which
perhaps he means that they live on the plots they till ; and, thirdly, that
the "houses are grouped in tens under a decurion," a phrase which no
doubt includes all the system of administration by local elders, which has
been in force more or less since the first inception of the Rites of Chow.
The conjectural estimates of the whole revenue of the Empire given by
different Fathers do not differ much from the statistics of the Ming, pub
lished under the present dynasty. According to them, the money revenues
alone may have amounted to about ^14,000,000, though this statement is
not of much use without a more exact estimate than can be made of the
amount and value of the contributions in kind, which were, if anything,
more considerable than under the Mongols. But in population and re
venue the Ming empire was certainly far inferior to that of the Mantchus,
and its palmiest days were far from witnessing such a development of
wealth and population as took place in the 18th century.
Martini, who lived in China down to 165 1,1 may be counted among the
authorities for the Ming period, though he wrote the history of the Tatar
conquest. He occupies a sort of middle position between the first gene
ration of missionary pioneers and the school of writers who, as Chinese
students, produced the Memoires concernant les Chinois, and as Christian
missionaries, the Chinese volumes of the Lettres Adifiantes. He has a way
of his own of summing up his impressions, though they agree in substance
with those of his predecessors. He often thought that if the Great Wall
had extended round the whole of China, the effect would be like that of a
single well-built and populous city, "a raison que si vous sortez d'un lieu
cultive' et habite', vouz entrez tout aussitot dans un autre qui ne l'est pas
moins." The Government of this wide city strikes him as resembling or
copying "la conduite d'un ordre religieux bien dtably;" and consider!^,
1 Description Glographique de la Chine. -lS coffin.

272 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
how strict a control the Order of Loyola aimed at exercising over its
members, it would be hard for a Jesuit to find a stronger expression to
describe the reality and vigour of the administrative machine.
Martini's scholarship did not allow him to depend upon the letter of the
Classics unassisted by oral information, and he is only repeating or com
menting upon the commonplaces of good society when he says of his
native friends : " lis disent des choses fort relevees touchant les vertus,
rapportant le tout au gouvernement de la republique." The doctrine of
the sect of the philosophers " teaches the exercise of public and private
virtues, which they say ought to be cultivated for their own sake, without
reference to external rewards. Virtue being the finest thing in the world,
is a sufficient end in itself." The antique severity of the doctrine calls up
reminiscences of Greece and Rome, but the Father quaintly concludes, the
ancients never said anything "de semblable ni de meilleur."
Except from the Spaniards and the Portuguese, we do not receive any
real information from European sources about China in the 16th or
first half of the 17th centuries. Neither the English nor the Dutch
had any success in their attempts to open an overland route. English
ships do not seem to have reached the coast of China till the close of the
1 6th century, when the expedition under Benjamin Wood was repulsed, at
the instance of the Spaniards, who denounced the English as "robbers."
They were refused access on the ground of their being enemies of Spain,
Spain not being an enemy of China — an objection raised again in the
18th century against Sir George Anson.
A Dutch embassy, projected before the Tatar conquest, succeeded in
reaching the Court of Peking in 1656, and found that the change of
dynasty had made little difference even in the personnel of the administra
tion. Most of the civil officers with whom they came in contact were
Chinese, and the final defeat of the mission was a triumph of courteous
Chinese diplomacy. Adam Schall, the Jesuit astronomer, whom they
found in high favour at court, was also suspected of using his influence
and some Portuguese money to defeat their object. After performing the
kotow and receiving the Emperor's presents, which were not of very great
value, the Dutch were asked if they could come every three years to do
homage. They offered to come every five years if they were allowed
meanwhile to send four vessels regularly to trade with Canton ; but at this
the Chinese officials, in professed concern for their long and dangerous
voyage, suggest that once in nine years will be often enough for them to
come, — this kind of homage not carrying with it leave to trade ad interim.
Finally they were told that it was contrary to Chinese custom to allow
foreigners to trade, and the fact that such liberty was not expressly asked
for in the Ambassador's credentials was acutely seized on. The party was
compelled to start on the homeward journey within two hours after re
ceiving the Emperor's official letter of reply. In it, with much politeness,
and out of consideration for the risks and sufferings to which they and
their vessels would be exposed upon such long and dangerous voyages,

The Government of China in the 17th or 18th century was no doubt
sincerely unable to understand what there was offensive to European
powers in its pretensions.
The princes, who acknowledged the authority of a strong king of one of
the first Chinese dynasties, were originally local or tribal chieftains, who
joined or adhered to a loose national federation for the sake of the pro
tection the central power could give to outlying branches scattered among
barbarous or hostile tribes. The accession of strength was reciprocal, and
the reality of the tie between the suzerain and his feudatories is proved by
the importance attached in the earliest classics to the regular visits of
the princes to the royal court. The etiquette concerning the reception
of tribute-bearers was thus fixed at a time when the tributary princes were
for the most part of Chinese nationality, and the alien ambassadors only
represented really barbarous tribes. The etiquette established for such
receptions is as old as the Chow Li, and until European ambassadors under
stood in what character they were supposed to approach the Chinese Court,
they could not explain clearly and convincingly in what particulars the
supposition was erroneous. And, at the same time, till the Europeans
had explained their own view of their own position, China could not be
expected to understand in what respects the modern foreigners from the
West differed from the tributaries and barbarians of antiquity, and from the
dangerous barbarian neighbours of recent history.
As the proposed adherence to an unsuitable etiquette has been one
great obstacle, in the way of intercourse between China and the kingdoms
of the West, it becomes evident that the course of European trade in the
present century has been materially influenced by the course of Chinese
history 3,000 years before. A demonstration, on the one hand of the
natural solidarity of mankind, and on the other an argument for including
the ancient history of all the nations in the world in the curriculum of a
diplomat's education. The orginal claims of the Court of China are
reduced by the translation of the Chinese Classics, to the harmless pro
portions of an historical survival, archaeologically interesting rather than
politically offensive.

vol. n. — p.c.

CHAPTER XXIV.
THE MANTCHU DYNASTY CALLED TSING.
1644- * * =t= *
The date given for the accession of the first Mantchu emperor of China,
known as Shun-chi, is 1644; but the Mantchus, not improperly from the
Chinese point of view, count his father and grandfather respectively as the
Tai-tsong and Tai-tsou of the dynasty. Of course the official history of
the reigning house has not yet been published, but the emperor known as
Kang-hi (Profound Peace) had some memoirs compiled, which reach down
to 1708; and from 1702, De Mailla, who carries the history down to the
accession of Yung-ching in 1723, was an eye-witness of the events he
records. His editor compiled an account of the following reign, and
there is no dearth of materials for the long period Kien-lung (Protection
of Heaven), which brings us almost to the beginning of the present
century. As in the time of the Mongols, the South of China held out longest
against the new rulers. The defeated officers, who remained faithful to
the fallen dynasty, were put to death if they refused allegiance to the
conquerors ; but their scruples and the feelings of their descendants were
so far respected that, after the execution, they were interred with honour
able ceremonies. In 165 1 the Emperor began to govern without a regency,
and ordered the Six Boards to have their numbers doubled, so that there
should be a Mantchu and a Chinese in every post. The next year literary
examinations were held, and the granting of degrees for bribes was severely
punished. In 1654 Adam Schall, who stood high in the Emperor's favour,
" presented " a system of astronomy, which was ordered to supersede that
of the Mahomedans.
In 1656 an embassy from Russia, desiring leave to trade, was refused
audience because the members of it refused to perform the customary
prostrations, or to accept the status of vassals. Two years later the Grand
Lama was allowed to do homage at Peking, the Chinese emperor having
acquired, through the accession of the Mantchu reigning house, a curious
sort of protectorate over the established church of Tatary. In the same
year the last recognised scions of the Ming Dynasty were put to death,
and the lamas, who had been expelled under the later Chinese emperors,
applied for leave to return and resume possession of their foundations.
The young emperor fell under the influence of these sectaries, but died at

THE MANTCHU DYNASTY CALLED TSING. 275
an early age, it was said from grief at the loss of one of his wives, at
whose tomb thirty officers, who had volunteered for the purpose, were
sacrificed, in accordance with the barbaric Tatar custom, formally abolished
in the next reign.
The new Emperor, better known to Europeans by the name of his
period, Kang-hi, than by his own name, Shing-too, was a child of eight at
the time of his accession, 1662. Four regents were at once appointed,
who proceeded to banish eunuchs from the palace, and passed a law for
bidding their elevation to offices and honours. Throughout the preceding
reign a kind of informal alliance had existed between the adherents of the
Ming Dynasty and the bands of pirates who harassed the Chinese coast.
The most famous of these, Koshinga, who recovered Formosa from the
Dutch, might at least receive the title of privateer, as his loyalty to the
native rulers withstood tempting offers from the regency ; while his suc
cesses enabled him to command a fleet much superior to anything possessed
by the Government. Accordingly, in 1663, an heroic remedy was resorted
to, and for 30 // inland the coast was laid waste, so that the raids of the
pirates might be rendered unprofitable. At the same time all foreign traffic
was prohibited, except through Macao, where the Portuguese were tolerated
on condition of turning their still dreaded firearms against the rebels. .
In the following year a petition was presented against the indulgence
shown to Christians, and, especially, the exaltation of Schall to the Presi
dency of the Mathematical Board. A majority of the regency were in
favour of his degradation. In 1666 the thirteen-year-old emperor was de
clared of age, and very shortly began to govern as well as to reign. In
1669 the new president of the mathematical board wished to restore the
old system of calculation. The emperor proposed a test, and the Chris
tians alone succeeded in pointing out where the shadow would fall at
noon on the following day, and in calculating the exact date for past
eclipses. Schall's successor was accordingly banished, and his own name
-rehabilitated. It was further decreed that the Christian religion was not bad in itself,
and might be professed freely by the Europeans, whose duty it was to
continue in the faith of their ancestors ; only— as the Chinese had exactly
the same duty towards their ancestors — the Europeans were not to preach
the foreign creed to them. Father Verbiest was appointed to succeed
Adam Schall at the Mathematical Board, and the young emperor studied
astronomy, geometry, trigonometry, and European music under his guid
ance. Unlike his father, Kang-hi had no leaning towards Buddhist or
other superstitions, and his interest in the Europeans at his court, like his
concern for Chinese literature, was perfectly rational and scientific.
In 1688 two of the missionaries were employed as interpreters during
the negotiations, carried on in Latin, with an embassy sent by the Czar of
Russia, to fix the boundaries of the two empires, and, if possible, to secure
leave to trade. Father Gerbillon and his colleague succeeded in effecting
an amicable settlement satisfactory to both Governments, as the Russians

276 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
obtained leave to trade, and the Chinese secured the demolition of a
fortress menacingly near their frontier. A college was founded for the
training of Chinese youth in Latin, to act as interpreters in future dealings
with the Russians, but did not meet with much success. In 1692 Kang-hi
was cured of an obstinate fever by the missionaries' quinine, and the high-
water mark of Chinese toleration was reached in a decision, which received
the Emperor's approval just seven years after the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes: it -was to the effect "that all places of religious worship in the
empire should be allowed to remain, and any one who likes permitted to
pray and burn perfumes in them without molestation." x
Kang-hi was fond of making the Fathers talk to him about Europe, and
the half-ironical remarks, which they attribute to him, seem to show that
he was better informed than they imagined as to the relations of Church
and State in our Western wilds. But Christianity as a religion did not
interest him ; he probably agreed with his predecessors in regarding it as
" a kind of Fo religion," which was no recommendation to a prince who
had condescended to translate the diatribes of Han-wen-kung into Tatar,
and there were no diplomatic reasons, such as made him anxious for the
friendship of the Talai Lama, to weigh in its favour. The reports sent by
the Jesuits to Europe were naturally not altogether exempt from the hope
ful reticences common in most missionary correspondence ; and they failed
to convey to the ecclesiastical powers of the West any true idea of the ex
treme precariousness of their position, and the humiliating parallels used
to justify the tolerance extended to them.
On the other hand, the Orders, who had not as yet established a Chinese
mission, and notably the Dominicans, accused the Jesuits of showing too
much indulgence to the native heresies of the Chinese ; and we find, in
1700, the acclimatized Jesuits trying to defend themselves against the
suspicions of their rivals, by appealing to the Emperor, to declare whether
their interpretation of the Ancestor Worship of the Chinese, and the sacri
fices to Heaven and Earth, is correct or not. They profess to have under
stood that the latter were not offered to the visible sky, but to the supreme
lord, author, and preserver of heaven, earth, and all that they contain ;
while they interpreted the Rites concerning ancestors to indicate the love felt
for them, and the desire to preserve the memory of the good done by them
when alive. The Chinese are not given to theological hair-splitting, and
Kang-hi endorsed this rendering of Chinese doctrine as correct ; but the
Dominicans were not satisfied, and considered the expressions used
" equivocal," while in fact they decidedly exaggerate the deistic character
of the old Chinese nature worship.
The edict of 1692 had been honestly accepted by the Tribunal of Rites;
for in 1702, when a viceroy, who had forbidden the erection of a new
church at Ning-po, appealed to it, he was referred to the edict as a proof
that the church must be allowed. But the heat and passion of controversy
is in itself offensive to the Chinese sense of propriety. It will be remem-
1 De Mailla, xi. p. 164.

THE MANTCHU DYNASTY CALLED TSING. ' 277
bered that when their own men of letters grew violent and embittered over
the controversy between the disciples of the Innovator and the school of
Choo-hi, the Emperor was appealed to to restore order and peace by silen
cing both sides impartially. And the wrangling of foreign sectaries could
not meet with greater toleration. Accordingly, a change took place : in
1706 an edict was published, banishing all the missionaries from China
who had not special license to remain, which was granted only to those
who undertook never to return to Europe, and to approve of the Chinese
ceremonies which had been attacked.
There was some delay in enforcing this decree, for in 1 7 1 7 a Canton
official memorialized the Emperor on the danger arising from the presence
of the Hong-mao, of different kingdoms, but all alike barbarous. The
memoir was referred to the tribunals, and, on their report, it was again
decided that only missionaries who had received express license to reside
in China should be allowed to remain ; the rest were to be banished, the
churches destroyed, and the Chinese converts, who refused to repent and
renounce their errors, punished as severely as those who sell rice for export
in the South. This parallel is, of course, an intentional reminder that the
real objection to the foreign creed lies in the double allegiance it involves ;
it is as bad to receive orders from without, to control the action of Chinese
subjects, as it is to supply the foreigner with food, that may be required for
the support of natives.
In 1720 a papal legate was sent for the second time to China, in order
to explain to the Emperor what concessions the Pope was prepared to make
in regard to the national rites of the Chinese. He was courteously received ;
but, at his fourth interview, the Emperor expressed surprise at the trivial
nature of the foreigners' disputes. With the elaborate suggestiveness of
Chinese diplomacy, he went on to intimate that, perhaps, if the Chinese
understood the customs and literature of Europe, they might not think the
European pictures of winged men (i.e. angels) as ridiculous as they did.
But, if it were thus impossible for the Chinese to form a proper opinion
about European angels, how could the Pope form one about Chinese rites ?
Personally, Mezzabarba made a favourable impression on the Emperor,1
who begged him to come back again with a good doctor and the best
European books, especially on mathematics. But the endorsement added
with the vermilion pencil to the papal message was uncompromisingly
severe : " Ignorant and contemptible Europeans, naturally incapable of
apprehending the great doctrines of China," were blamed for their
sectarian violence, like that of the Ho-chang and Tao-sse, and forbidden
to preach their doctrine, which can only be a source of strife and confu
sion. The Jesuits did their best to dissociate themselves from the anti-Con
fucian zeal of their rivals ; nevertheless, they too may have fallen in the
1 John Bell, of Antermony, who had accompanied a Russian embassy to Peking, saw
Mezzabarba there, and was especially impressed by the activity and kindly manners of the
old emperor.

278 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
emperor's opinion, as men possibly disloyal to the orthodoxy of their own
people. Kang-hi was shrewd enough to guess that European Catholics, in
their native lands, ought to agree with the Pope ; and when that potentate
disavowed the Jesuits, it became natural to look on them as a sort of
Western Tao-sse ; while in the absence of any proselytizing zeal on the part
of the Chinese, they received little credit for merely being less dense than
the legate in appreciating the truths of Confucianism.
In his personal dealings' with the accredited missionaries, Kang-hi
showed the most delicate consideration for their religious scruples, but this
was rather as a matter of politeness or good breeding than religious
toleration. He refused the request of the Great Lama to have his portrait
taken by one of the Europeans, without consulting them, lest they should
have scruples about painting an idolatrous priest. From a similar scruple
he would not ask the musical Father to give an opinion about the per
formance of a female harp player. And lie was careful to explain, when
ordering the preparation of a Mantchu version of an anatomical treatise,
that two experienced physicians should be associated with the Fathers, lest
they should have religious difficulties in dealing with any part of the
subject ; though, as he hastened to assure them, the language was not
wanting in terms of proper modesty, while the work would only be in
the hands of professionals, and not be seen by young persons or the
general public.1 Under these circumstances the despatch of the Arch
bishop of Tournon, who reached Canton as Legate a latere in 1704, with a
pontifical decree condemning the Chinese ceremonies, was resented — not
as a heresy, but as a breach of good manners — suggesting that the emperor's
own courtesy had been thrown away on irreclaimable barbarians. The
decree in question was published in 1707, and the archbishop, who had
been personally well received, was detained a prisoner at Macao till 17 10,
when he died, partly, at least, of hardships, vvhich were not diminished by
the news of his elevation to the Cardinalate the year before.
Of course, the above incidents would occupy but a small place in the
native annals ; but the long reign was, on the whole, fortunately free from
great historical events. In 1673, a Chinese governor, who had early pro
nounced in favour of the Mantchus, headed a rebellion in Yunnan, and
published a new calendar, which he sent into the neighbouring tributary
kingdoms. In 1675, there were threats of a Mongol revolt and invasion;
and a year or two later, the Eleuths, who in the previous reign had been
permitted to pasture their flocks west of the Hoang-ho, showed similar
signs of insubordination. The Emperor claimed a kind of protectorate
over all these Tatar tribes, and the friendly relations kept up with their
spiritual chief, the Talai Lama, were intended to enable him the better to
keep the peace between them. In 1681, the loyal Mongols were exhorted
by the emperor to organize a sort of militia to defend their flocks and
territories. Ten years later he paid from the Treasury a large sum to
discharge debts incurred by soldiers at Peking, and forbade the lending
1 Lettres Edifiantes, xix. p. 261.

THE MANTCHU DYNASTY CALLED TSING. 279
of money to them in future ; while, to ensure obedience to the enactment,
such loans were declared to be non-recoverable.1 He was always afraid
of the military virtue of the Mantchus degenerating in South China, and
was careful not to leave his officers long on duty there. Diplomatic
and military campaigns, frequently conducted by the emperor in person,
continued for a number of years, — in fact, till after the death of the
Eleutian chief, Kaldan, in 1697.
During all this time the range of Chinese influence was being steadily
extended ; and the chief's jealousy of Chinese encroachments showed itself
by the inquiry why the emperor had sent his young men to the Tanguts,
to learn their language. The ambassadors replied that it was for love of
knowledge, the acquisition of which gives pleasure, like that of a man
retiring joyously from a great feast. But it is none the less true, that
Chinese delight in this particular branch of learning is apt only to show
itself under the strong dynasties, which count the greater part of Asia
among their tributaries. Even the aggressions of their rivals redounded to
their gain, as in 17 14, when the chief Eleuth king, a representative of the
old Mongol Dynasty, invaded Tibet, contesting the authority of the lamas,
who at once proceeded to invite — and to obtain — Chinese protection.
Kang-hi wrote notes of his travels for his son, and in 1696, particularly,
he was much struck with the civilization of the Ortos, among whom the
true old Mongol customs had been preserved. Thieves, he observes, were
unknown, though horses and camels graze without keepers ; and if one
strays, the finder restores it to the owner, without asking or expecting a
reward. In 1707 he visited the Southern provinces, but resolved not to do
so again, because they were impoverished by the cost of his magnificent
reception. Private persons were forbidden to hang their houses with silk on
such occasions, and the expenditure of the localities was limited, while the
Emperor himself spent money freely on the embankments and canals ; but
it was difficult to get the royal preference for economy believed in or acted
upon. On his return, as a cheaper and not less effective way of acquainting
himself with his domains, he ordered a map of the empire to be prepared,
upon which the licensed missionaries were employed, and which for long
continued to be the only authority for Chinese geography.
It was a matter of course that in so long a reign periods of temporary
or local dearth should occur. In 1684 the regulations for an official system
of grain transport were published, and, having been re-edited in 1818, are
presumably still in force. The Lettres Adifiantes speak, in 1699, of distribu
tions of rice by the Emperor extending as far as Corea; and in 1704 there
was a scarcity during which he employed the missionaries, to some extent,
as almoners, and required voluntary contributions or benevolences from his
courtiers. That the Kang-hi period was on the whole one of social as
well as political prosperity is, however, proved by the rapid increase in the
population, which was itself one of the causes adding to the ruler's anxiety
1 In Amyot's time the credit of the Mantchus was good, so they did not profit by the
edict to repudiate their obligations.

zSo • OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
in relation to the food supply. In 17 17 the export of rice, in Chinese
vessels trading with the South, was forbidden, under penalties, as already
mentioned, similar to those inflicted on foreign perverters of the ancestral
national faith.
The Ming Shi, or official history of the preceding dynasty, was begun
by order of Kang-hi in 1696, completed in 1725, and solemnly con
veyed to the " Palace of Imperial History." The Imperial dictionary,
constantly referred to by Chinese scholars, was compiled by. the Han-lin
College, under this emperor's orders ; and he himself published, at the age
of sixteen, sixteen maxims on the Art of Government, each consisting of
seven characters only, which, with the amplifications and comments added
by his son and successor, Yung-ching, form the well-known Ching-yu or
Sacred Edict.1 The Jesuits were required to translate for him anything
of interest in the latest memoirs of the Academie des Sciences, at Paris;
and by his desire Father Parennin translated an anatomical treatise into
Mantchu. One of Parennin's letters contains an interesting account 3 of
the discussions they held concerning the comparative merits of European
languages and characters, and Chinese and Mantchu. The emperor's
remarks are those of an intelligent and well-educated linguist, and he was
able to justify some partiality for his native tongue by pointing out its
richness in special terms, e.g. a dog of a particular age, colour, and breed
is described by a separate single term ; and so with a number of objects
which would have to be designated in other languages by the use of several
words. The porcelain manufactures had suffered somewhat during the Tatar
invasions in the middle of the 17th century. Under Kang-hi, the director
of the imperial manufactory introduced an oleaginous clay, of which vases
of different colours were made — green, yellow, uniform and sprinkled ; and
azure, pale yellow, green and violet enamels were also used ; and red and
blue soufffi: In the next reign, an inspector of sluices, or waterworks,
named Nien, was put in charge of the imperial ceramics. The work done
under him was delicate and highly finished ; some with flowers, painted or
engraved, and some of a silvery white. In 1728 a manufacturer, famous
for his skill in imitating the ancients, came to King-te-ching, and was
associated with Nien. In 1736 he was put for eight years by Kien-lung
in charge of the bridge-tolls of the Hwai, and then over the customs of
Kiang-si. He went in for science, as we should say ; was cunning in the
qualities of different earths and materials, and invented various enamels.
He also published, by order of the emperor, twenty-two plates, illustrative
of the different processes used in making and decorating china, with the
necessary explanations, the text of which, with the plates, is given in M.
Stanislas Julien's work.3
1 For text, translation, and commentary, see four lectures by Dr. Legge, on Imperial
Confucianism (1877), reprinted in the China Review.
2 L.E., vol. xix. I.e., ed. 1781.
3 Histoire de la porcelaine Chinoise cf. also Let. 'res Ldif, vol. xviii. p. 225 ff.

THE MANTCHU DYNASTY CALLED TSING. 281
Kang-hi died in 1722, and received the posthumous title of " Gracious,"
or "Benevolent." He had shown one personal weakness in declining to
appoint a successor ; and even refused to appear on his birthday in the
preceding year, because he had been annoyed by requests that he would
do so. His eldest son had been put to death for plotting, and parties had
been formed in favour of a ninth and fourteenth son, both of whom were
now exiled and imprisoned.
Y'ung-ching, the fourth son, was forty on his accession ; he had previously
shown some leaning towards the Tao-sse ; but as Emperor, he professed
rigid orthodoxy. The misfortunes of his brothers were of purely dynastic
origin ; but some of the Jesuits seem to have been implicated in party
intrigues in favour of other princes during the late reign, and some of the
exiles were converts to Christianity. The two circumstances naturally
went together and explain each other, for the Europeans would naturally
wish the succession to fall to the prince who showed most favour to their
doctrines ; but they also explain the disfavour into which the Europeans
and their law now fell.
Various edicts and memorials were published, in which the waste of
money on churches, the discouragement of marriage,1 the use of the con
fessional, especially by women, and the appearance of the latter at church,
in mixed congregations, were denounced as gross moral scandals. The
erection of new temples was forbidden to the members of other supersti
tious sects, the Ho-chang and Tao-sse ; but, by a scruple seldom felt by
religious persecutors or reformers, the Chinese held that the churches,
having been erected by the people, should only be used for their benefit.
The buildings ought to be secularized ; but the materials could not be
applied to the repair of official tribunals, but must be used for granaries,
schools, halls for ancestral worship, or similar social objects.
The missionaries complained that over 300 churches were given over to
the unbelievers, and turned into schools, colleges, town halls, and public
granaries; while, by an amusing application of the doctrine of cy-pres, one
church, of St. Mary the Virgin, was converted into a hall in honour of a
famous widow. Sometimes they succeeded in bribing the officials of the
Record Office to produce Kang-hi's edict of 1692, when referred to, instead
of that issued in 1706 ; but this expedient was seldom available, and the
Europeans, who had not received permission to stay and make themselves
useful at court, were repeatedly warned to leave the country.
An honorary title was given to Father Kegler in 1725, in order to enable
him to appear decorously at court, as President of the Board of Mathe
matics ; but it was not a sign of special favour, as several eunuchs received
the same decoration. Yung-ching at this time received another embassy
from the Pope ; and in the reply, which was sent with presents, he observed,
with admirable self-complacency, that he had been very kind to the Euro-
1 Of three sins against filial piety, that of. not leaving descendants is the chief (Lcltrcs
lidif., xix. p. 343 ; ib., p. 353) ; it is said that a church cannot cost less than 2,coc or
3,000 taels, say £400.

282 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
peans settled in his country, had taken pains to instruct them and teach
them the duty of submission to their superiors, of treating their equals with
moderation and courtesy, and of curing the defects of their restless and
turbulent temperament by cultivating a becoming tranquillity !
In the same spirit the Emperor condescended to instruct his officers as
to the proper way of dealing with a Mantchu Christian. "Heaven "and
" the Lord of Heaven " mean the same thing — every nation does honour
to Heaven ; but each have their own way of doing it. No one desired to
interfere with the convert's worship ; but a Mantchu ought to worship
Heaven after the rites of his people. If he refuses to do so, he is wrong ;
he may even have the malignity to argue that he will be put to death for
his disobedience, and thus cause the emperor to be blamed, as if he was
condemned for disloyalty like his father's. Thus instructed, the nobles
proceeded afresh to reason with the convert. " You say that the doctrine
of the Europeans teaches you to rule your heart and spirit. Is not that
just what the writings of our ancient sages teach? You say that the Lord
of Heaven was born among men for their salvation 1,700 years ago, but
long before that time, in the days of Yao and Shun, when the law of the
Europeans did not exist, the worship of Heaven was known among us.
Can you dare to deny it?"
Conclusive as this reasoning must have seemed, we gather that the in
quisitors were creditably loth to hand over to the secular arm any Christians
who were able to reason temperately in their own defence. Thus a Chris
tian graduate of the preceding century was allowed to have the last word
when he objected to the customary sacrifices, on the ground that to sup
pose the spirits would confer benefits, in return for offerings of meat and
drink, is to have a worse opinion of them than of the most covetous
official.1 The misfortune of the missionaries was that they felt obliged to begin
their propaganda with the outlines of " Gospel history," which had neither
interest nor charm for ethical atheists like the literati. If they had been
able to drop their theological foundations, and go straight to the master
pieces of devotional psychology, like the " Imitation," or even the finer
works of the Casuists, the candid Chinese mind would have been touched,
and the literati, who did not share Kang-hi's taste for science, would have
recognised the value of European contributions to what they regard as a
higher line of thought.
The will published in Kang-hi's name by his successor is not supposed
to be genuine ; but whether it was composed by the father or the son, it
is equally available as an illustration of the sentiments supposed to be
becoming to a famous sovereign at the close of his career. He admits
that by comparison with the rulers of the three first dynasties, he has not
succeeded in securing plenty to every family, and the necessaries of life
1 As a matter of fact, the doctrine of sacrifices, as set forth in the Li Ki, rests the
institution on purely subjective grounds ; a feeling of natural piety prompts the sacrifi
cial act, which is entirely disinterested, if sincere.

THE MANTCHU DYNASTY CALLED TSING. 28

o

to every individual. Still he had laboured to secure peace throughout the
empire, and contentment among all his subjects ; he had not uselessly
squandered the blood of his people or the treasure of the empire, but had
only taken what was necessary for the armies, and to give help in famine.
He claimed also that his dynasty had obtained the empire more righteously
than any of its predecessors. Yung-ching, who produced this document,
professed to conduct his administration upon the same principles.
In 1724 he reduced the taxes paid by some over-burdened towns, and
gave grain to districts suffering from drought in the South ; while rebuking
the officers who wished to set up monuments to his generosity, which
might be the occasion of fresh exactions. In one province 196,000 bushels
of rice were distributed ; and as it was estimated that 120 lbs. of rice would
feed 100 people for one day — or 200 if made into rice water — the dona
tions represent something like three months' rations for 50,000 families.
On the threat of drought in a province, the emperor shut himself up in
the palace and fasted till rain began ; and then published an edict on the
connection between the sins of man and the judgments of heaven, drawing
the antique moral, that when calamities befall, men should attend to their
conduct, and mortify and correct themselves.
In the next year there were excessive rains in the North, which caused
distress ; and YuDg-ching thereupon exhorts his officers to let him know
what help is needed, and to be active in distributing it. He knows that
there is often injustice in such distributions ; but he will keep a look-out
against corruption, and warns them to do the same. At this time 40,000
paupers made their way to Peking, and received official relief, the Emperor
instructing his officers to wink at the breach of the standing police regula
tions against giving house-room to strangers.
At the end of four months, when it was time for agricultural work to
begin, the refugees were drafted back to their native districts, and com
mitted to the charge of the local officers, with orders to enable them to
cultivate their own land if they had any ; and if not, to employ them on
useful public works, or to see them started at some trade. They were con
veyed at the public expense, by land or water, according to their destina
tion, and received an ample allowance to buy food during the journey,
besides a final donative of a tael to every adult, and half that amount to
children ; but any person who claimed the gift wrongfully was to be
punished. Those who had no land were expected to find employment
on imperial works, or as porters, labourers, or in petty commerce ; none
were to be allowed to remain idle. Meanwhile public notice was given
that the distribution of rice at Peking had ceased, and officers on the road
were instructed to turn back any who were making their way to the capital
in the hope of sharing in its bounties.1
After this the emperor arranged for the regular distribution of rice to
6,000 poor in Peking every winter, apart from special distress. The officers
1 The history of Yung-ching's reign was compiled by De Mailla's editor, M. le Roux
des Hautesrayes, De Mailla's work ceasing with the death of Kang-hi.

284 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
employed gave away damaged grain ; but the emperor had samples of it
brought him secretly, and found some of it entirely rotten, not rice, but
dust and earth ; while of the greater portion not more than 30 to 40
per cent, was good. He then harangued against such a misrepresenta
tion of his commands, and ordered 100,000 measures of the best rice to
be taken from his stores and conveyed, with as much more as a special
donative, at the expense of the peccant officers, to the needy districts.
With characteristic allowance for practical exigencies, he adds that if all
the rice cannot be excellent, at least not more than 30 or 40 per cent, of
damaged must be allowed to pass.
Complaints were made of over-population and distress in Yunnan and
Kwei-chow,1 while there were many waste lands paying no tribute. To
remedy this evil it was announced that any one reclaiming the said wastes
should acquire a good title to them, and hold them tax -free for six or ten
years, according to their quality. Honorific titles were promised to
wealthy persons advancing to destitute cultivators the means of living and
cultivating for the first year ; but in these cases land tax was paid from the
first. On the other hand, persons of means and literary rank were allowed
to gain a step without examination, and to acquire a good title to land
which they brought under cultivation at their own expense, though this
land also paid tribute from the first. Apparently twelve ounces of silver
was the capital required to reclaim fifteen mow (about three acres), which,
from the way it is mentioned, seems to have been reckoned as an average
holding. The license accorded to the gentry is interesting as showing how
entirely the old danger from agglomerators must have passed away.
Landlords' profits were not dangerously large, and persons capable of
cultivating more land than they possessed, by the help of hired labour,
had to be tempted by rewards or honours to do so. Evidently, therefore,
the average wages of the agricultural labourer must have been fixed by
custom at very nearly the same level as the earnings of the smallest pro
prietor. If the difference between the two had represented an equivalent
to the ordinary profits of middle-class trade or industry, the land would
have been taken up by speculators ; whereas, so far as appears, it required
about the same degree of virtuous liberality to pay wages to a labourer for
working on the land, and to lend capital enough to a petty freeholder for
the same end. The expedient must have proved successful, as it was
afterwards extended to other provinces.
In 1727 a new system of grain storage was proposed by an official as a
provision against bad years. The ancient custom had become obsolete,
and the governors of small towns had no means of making such reserves.
It was proposed, therefore, in years of abundance to advance money from the
Imperial Treasury to buy grain— say, allotting ^16,000 a year for five years,
and spending a quarter of that sum on repairing or erecting the necessary
1 In Fo-kien, too, the population was said to increase by 200,000 souls every year.
(L.E., xxii. p. 310.)

THE MANTCHU DYNASTY CALLED TSING. 285
magazines in four principal centres. The capital advanced would suffice
for the purchase of 120,000 measures at harvest-time, when rice is cheapest ;
in the spring, when it is dearer, the stores should be opened and grain sold,
which will keep the price from rising too much, and yet leave funds to buy
10,000 more measures than the year before. Thus the rice does not re
main in store long enough to spoil, and the quantity increases till it may
be hoped to suffice to carry the people through a season of scarcity. The
scheme was endorsed by the viceroy of Shensi as approved and to be
acted upon, and it was of course entirely in accordance with ancient
precedent.1 According to the missionaries, whose eye for the seamy side of Chinese
civilization seems to have grown keener as their own favour declined, this
system, of selling old rice to replenish the granaries with new, gave rise to
fresh abuses. When leave is granted, the officials sell the rice for cash to
the rich, instead of making advances in kind to the poor, and trade. them
selves with the money realized. If the storehouses are inspected, the same
officers will show a few receptacles with double bottoms and a little rice at
the top, and explain that the rest are empty because the harvest has been
bad, so that the debtors can only repay what they have borrowed by
degrees, and are too poor to be pressed. It was only at Peking and in
the adjoining provinces that there was always provision of rice in hand
for ten years, out of which the grain was sold whenever the price began
to rise.
At the beginning of his reign Yung-ching had invited confidential
memorials by undertaking not to disclose to the tribunals the substance
or the authorship of any that were presented to him sealed ; and his
remarks concerning the supply of rice show that he did not count upon a
verj- high standard of probity among his officers. The Lettres Edifiantes 2
contain a description of an ordinary number of the Peking Gazette of this
period (1727). It is published daily, and contains about sixty or seventy
pages, consisting of notices of twenty to thirty memorials on various sub
jects; the Emperor's answers to those previously presented, his instructions
or orders on these or other subjects, the reports presented by the Boards
for confirmation by the emperor, and memorials on matters of local in
terest from viceroys of provinces, generals, and other high officers. It is
interesting to note that praise and promotion were accorded to an officer,
en route for employment at Canton, who reported upon the failure of the
embankments in a district through which he passed, though it was not in
his department. The officer in whose department it was, was ordered to
pay for the repairs of which he had failed to report the need.
How far the Emperor's liberalities were at his own and how far at the
public expense is naturally difficult to determine. In 1730 his gifts to the
sufferers from an earthquake were on so wide a scale as even to include
1,000 taels to the missionaries for the repair of their churches. When he
was asked to allow some poor fishers to build themselves huts on the
1 I.E., xxii. p. 147- " Vo1- xxi- P- 98-

286 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
river bank, which is imperial property, he thought the boon too small, and
proposed to give them money to build with, and also to buy them boats, if
they had not got them. But in this case, as in the relief of the sufferers
from famine, the idea was not so much to bestow what we should call
charitable relief, as to put a whole class of persons, who had been
accidentally impoverished, once for all in a position to get their own living
comfortably again.
It was thought — and, on the whole, truly— that the average man, if he
had a fair start with average means and opportunities, would display
average industry with average success, and would prefer this chance to the
quest for " Poor man come here food." But the man who had been
reduced to beggary was not expected to possess such exceptional economic
virtue or capacity as to save, out of an average income, wherewithal to
repay society for what it had advanced to start him on a self-supporting
career. The ex-pauper was allowed to begin free of debt, and to receive
from the first undiminished the whole fruit of his personal industry ; and
to this wise liberality on the part of the State it is probably owing that the
taste and habit of industry is so strong among the Chinese people.
Yung-ching died in 1735. The missionaries, whose evidence is not
quite impartial, say that he was unpopular and avaricious. He was cer
tainly a less able and interesting person than either his father or his son ;
but he was conscientious, and, according to Chinese standards, humane.
It was he who introduced the custom of not signing death-warrants until
the case has been heard three times over. He was succeeded by his eldest,
not legitimate, son — a young man of twenty-five, who gave to his period
the name of Kien-lung. His tastes were literary, and he had had no
previous experience of business. His imprisoned uncles were at once
released, but the hopes of indulgence based on this circumstance by the
Christians were disappointed.
Kien-lung's tastes were literary rather than scientific, and the only
Europeans who had personal access to him were the artists, Father
Castiglione, who was employed in decorating the imperial palace, and
Father Attiret, who was offered official rank for painting the emperor's
portrait But when the former of these ventured upon any serious re
monstrance or discussion, he was told to mind his pictures; and in 1754
we find Father Amyot complaining that while Kien-lung employed the
missionaries more than either of his predecessors, he yet treated their
religion worse. They were, however, employed in much less dignified ways
than under Kang-hi — in making fountains, automatic toys, and such-like
trifles — the authors of which were naturally despised by the chief scholars
and officers of the empire ; or at least had weighty prejudices to overcome,
before their personal qualities could win tolerance for their motives.
In 1754 there was a little war with Tatars, which the emperor justified
because the state of the treasury allowed it to be carried on without
burdening the people. The first expedition met with reverses, but fresh
armies and generals were sent till the Eleulhs were fairly subdued. The

THE MANTCHU DYNASTY CALLED TSING. 287
Chinese claimed to inherit the control which this people had exercised
over the Mahomedans of Little Bokhara and the trading stations of Central
Asia. The inhabitants of the towns of Yarkand, Cashgar, and others were
said to welcome the prospect of Chinese government.1 The Mahomedans
were pursued into the passes of Pamir, and defeated finally in the neigh
bourhood of Lake Issikol. The fugitives who took refuge in Badakshan
were put to death by the native princes, anxious to conciliate the mighty
power of China, whose protectorate over Central Asia thus became a
reality again, to an extent unknown except under the Tangs and Mongols.
China was thus rendered more secure than ever previously against ag
gressions from the West ; and this security was not purchased, as under
the Tang monarchs, by neglect of the interests of the empire proper.
The Emperor seems to have entered on the campaign under less severe
pressure than was generally needed to put a Chinese army in motion, and
its success redounded greatly to his credit. The general in charge of the
expedition made a report on the quality of the land, the taxes to be im
posed, the currency required by local trade (which he proposed to supply
free of cost by melting down the old captured cannon), and other ad
ministrative details of a kind usually dealt with by civilians. He reports
that the foreign merchants in Cashgar were taxed one-twentieth of their
profits ; while those trading in Russia and elsewhere gave one-tenth or
thereabouts of their returns ; and he describes the condition of the people
as worse than it used to be, and begs the emperor's compassion for them
on that account He adds that, as the soil is not very good, returning only
seven or eight fold in the best years, and two or three fold in the worst,
he has given lands to the rebels, on condition of their paying half their
profits to the emperor.
In 1770 a tribal movement of Tourguts brought some hundreds ot
thousands across the Russian border, desiring permission to settle within
the Chinese empire. They had fled fifty years before from the Eleuths,
into Russian territory, but became discontented at the taxes imposed on
them, and were finally induced to make another move, when their chief's
son was seized as a hostage to Russia. They were well received in China,
where their submission was regarded as a great tribute to the emperor's
good government.2 Five years later the Miao-tsze, the mountain barbarians
of the central South, were finally subdued, and their chiefs carried captive
to Peking. The general who achieved this success was subsequently em
ployed to " regulate the waters " of the Hoang-ho, the ravages of which
were kept within bounds till its change of course, in 1820, at the close of
the next reign.
Kien-lung had been scrupulous in discharging all the duties of filial piety
1 An English writer describes "the outcome of Chinese domination," in Eastern
Turkestan, as " plenty and content, peaceful hamlets and smiling inhabitants." (Boulger
and Shaw, Life of Yakoob Khan, p. 59.)
2 Quite recently 50,000 Russian subjects desired to emigrate to China, to escape the
conjoined pressure of taxation and scarcity.

288 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
towards his mother, and on her decease, in 1777, at an advanced age, he
bestowed on her the retrospective title of Empress, and gave an amnesty in
her honour, charging all the local officials, at the same time, to pay special
attention to all charitable foundations. A Taoist insurrection in Sz'chuen,
in favour of a Ming pretender, gave some trouble, and it was said that
native Christians were implicated in it ; but it is almost inevitable that local
disturbances should be noted occasionally in an empire as extensive as the
Middle Kingdom had now become. In 1792 the Tibetans appealed to
China for aid against the Ghoorkhas, and after a creditable campaign, from
which the Chinese troops returned victorious, Nepaul was enrolled among
Chinese tributaries.1
Sir George Anson spent some time off the Chinese coast, towards the
close of his voyage round the world (1740-44), and does not appear to
have had any valid ground of complaint as to his treatment, after he had
succeeded in overcoming the difficulties placed by the Portuguese in the
way of direct communication with the higher and responsible Chinese
officials. One of his ships leaked, and he applied for leave to repair
her, and buy provisions. Two Chinese officers came, accompanied by
native carpenters, to inspect the ship, and the leaks being found genuine,
and the vessel really not seaworthy, permission was given, and the repairs
done, by contract, by Chinese caulkers, of whom Anson says, " though they
worked very well, they were far from being expeditious."
On leaving Macao, Anson gave a false account of his intended route
and turned off to waylay the Spanish galleons from Manilla. He took two
prizes, and put into Canton to victual. He refused, as a man-of-war, to
pay harbour dues, and was aggrieved at not being received as in the port
of a friendly power. Yet that the inhospitality of the Chinese proceeded
only from natural distrust of strangers, concerning whom they knew no good,
appears from their relenting, as soon as the Spanish prisoners told them
that Spain and England were at war, and that the galleon had taken the
aggressive ; that it was not European custom to put prisoners of war to
death, and that Anson had treated his captives with unusual kindness and
courtesy. This and the great superiority in size and crew of the captured
Spanish ships gave a favourable impression of British power and civility,
which was confirmed by the help given by Anson's crew in putting out a
fire in Canton ; and he was allowed to re-victual, after he had given up the
Spanish prisoners in compliment to the Chinese, who, as allies of Spain,
undertook to pay their expenses to Macao.
In 1793 the first British embassy to China, under Lord Macartney, was
received by Kien-lung, who graciously consented to dispense with the
ceremony of prostration, and to receive the Europeans with their own
1 English newspaper correspondents were surprised in 1S87 to find a party of Nepaul-
ese tribute-bearers en route for China, and suggested that if Nepaul was really subject to
China, China should make it open its gates to English trade. But as China has never
attempted to dictate to her so-called tributaries for her own advantage, it was scarcely to
be expected that she should begin to do so for the satisfaction of foreigners.

THE MANTCHU DYNASTY CALLED TSING. 289
rites,1 a precedent by which his less enlightened and far less virtuous suc
cessor declined to be guided in the reception of Lord Amherst's embassy,
in 1816. The difficulties which led the English merchants at Canton to
desire the establishment of diplomatic relations between the courts of St.
James and Peking need not be dwelt upon here ; and, in fact, it will
probably conduce to a calm and accurate appreciation of Chinese ideas and
institutions, if we conform for the nonce to Chinese historic usage, and
leave it to a later generation to record the political incidents marking the
intercourse between China and Great Britain during the 19th century.
In 1796 the Emperor abdicated — at the age of eighty-five — in order that
his reign might not exceed in duration that of his venerated grandfather,
Kang-hi. Unfortunately, the son whom he nominated as successor was
a vicious and comparatively incapable prince ; and the four reigns of
Kia-king, Tau-kwang (1S2 1), Hien-fung (1851), and Tung-chi (1862) would
have been counted as beginning the decline of the Tsing Dynasty, but for
the revival of energy and vitality observable since the suppression of the
Taeping rebellion and the Mahomedan insurrection.
1 The future Sir George Staunton, then a boy, knelt and kissed his father's hand, to show
the Chinese in what fashion Englishmen did homage to their own sovereign.

VOL. II. — I.C.

CHAPTER XXV.
CONTEMPORARY CHINA.
We have now reached the most interesting, the most important, and the
most overwhelmingly difficult part of our subject. If all Western Europe
were one country, with three times its present population, it would compare,
in mere bulk, as a topic of discussion with the empire of China ; and it is
of such a district as this that we have to describe in brief the economic
life, and so much of its laws and social usages as affect the acquisition and
enjoyment of property. The task would be impossible but for one circum
stance. One of the points upon which all intelligent writers concerning
China and the Chinese are agreed, is the essentially homogeneous
character, both of the national empire as a whole, and of the life and
thought of each of the units included in its vast population. The habitual
thoughts of the people are in harmony with their conduct ; their manners
and customs reflect their ideas.
The writer's pains and the reader's patience would have been spared,
had it been possible to pass straight from the traditions of Yao and Shun
and the sayings of Chung and Mang, to the condition of modern China.
But nineteenth-century scepticism, relying on the brief experience of
Western Europe, would refuse to believe in a real connection between facts
and theories separated by twice two millenniums, unless the phenomenon
was vouched for by a succession of contemporary witnesses. If the history
of China, as sketched above, appears tedious as well as lengthy, it will at
least be allowed to be authentic ; and its course has certainly been
modified by the perennial censorship of orthodox men of letters.
Ordinary travellers —merchants, missionaries, or public servants from the
West — do not begin their knowledge of China by a study of the Classics ;
they are not on the look-out for coincidences between the practices of
common life and the doctrines of the learned ; and their evidence as to
the life and character of the modern Chinese is therefore free from bias.
Many of them deliver their favourable judgments with a tone of surprise
or apology, and none certainly have deliberately gone to China in quest
of an example, either of political or economic wisdom, suitable as a
corrective to the errors or defects of Western society.
Hitherto we have transcribed, with little comment or criticism, the
Chinese version of Chinese history, and the cursory impressions of Western
travellers in time past. We have now to give, in the same way, a sum
mary of the more detailed descriptions furnished by observers of our own

CONTEMPORARY CHINA. 291
age, and much that appears to them strange or paradoxical will be fairly
intelligible to us, when viewed in the light of the past history and literature
of the country. It is even possible, as already suggested, that the key to
the conservative wisdom of the Chaldasans and the Egyptians will be found,
rusty with age, but not unrecognisable or useless, in the hands of the
black-haired people with the almond eyes.
China, like ancient Egypt and ancient Babylonia, is a country with an
advanced civilization, but its civilization is of a totally different com
plexion from that of modern Europe. It is a primary, an archaic, a
primitive civilization ; while the culture of Europe and her colonies is
secondary, derivative, and composite : complicated with more numerous,
and perhaps higher, elements, less perfectly fused and harmonised ; conse
quently less stable and consistent, with a wider range of possibilities for
both progress and destruction. But archaic and primitive as it is, Chinese
civilization has a vitality, which we shall find it the less difficult to respect,
when we realize its kinship with those of the most famous empires of the
world's most ancient history. And from a study of contemporary China we
shall also learn to regret something of social and economic wisdom, that
was lost to the Western world with the fall of Thebes and Babylon, and has
not yet been wholly rediscovered.
In the Laws of China, nearly every passage bearing upon what we should
consider economic subjects is included in the " Part of the code for regu
lating households." The ownership of land, buying and selling, lending
and borrowing, and the execution of contracts generally, might all be in
cluded under the heading, " Domestic relations and family law," because
their regulation is left, almost entirely, in the hands of families and family
tribunals. But it is the results rather than the antecedents of the economic
system that we have to appreciate now, and for this purpose the descrip
tions of outsiders, who do not naturally start from the conception of the
family, are the most valuable.
One of the earliest, and certainly not one of the most partial of these
observers, Sir George Staunton, at the beginning of the present century,
"ventured to assert" the existence of "some very real, considerable, and
positive moral and political advantages," peculiar to the national constitu
tion of the Chinese, which he attributed " to the system of early and
universal marriage, to the sacred regard that is habitually paid to the ties of
kindred, to the sobriety, industry, and even intelligence, of the lower
classes ; to the almost total absence of feudal rights and privileges ; to the
equitable distribution of landed property ; to the natural incapacity of the
Government and people to an indulgence in ambitious projects and foreign
conquests ; and lastly, to a system of penal laws, if not the most just and
equitable, at least the most comprehensive, uniform, and suited to the
genius of the people for whom it is designed, perhaps of any that ever
existed." J
1 Ta Tsing Leu Lee, translated from the Chinese by Sir G. T. Staunton, Bt., 1810,
preface p. II.

2 92 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
In his voluminous work on the " Middle Kingdom," an American
missionary concludes his summary of similar observations as follows : "A
salubrious climate, semi-annual crops, unceasing industry, early marriages,
and an equable taxation, involving reasonable security of life and pro
perty ... all these causes and influences tend to increase population
and equalize the consumption and use of property, more perhaps than in
any other country.".1 It is true all over China, as the missionaries observed
at the beginning of the 18th century, that "food is abundant and
cheap," 2 except when the local harvest fails. The agreement of all
travellers on this point is so complete, that the verdict of one or two
writers is as conclusive as that of a score. " Food and lodging," says Mr.
Giles,3 " are cheap in China, and it may be roundly stated that every man,
woman, and child in the empire has something in the way of clothes, two
full meals a day, and a shelter for his head at night." And in another
passage, "The normal state of the people of China is one of considerable
prosperity and great national happiness." "I doubt," says Fortune,4 "if
there is a happier race anywhere than the Chinese farmers and peasantry;"
and again, " I fully believe that in no country in the world is there less
real misery and want than in China."5 " Riches," says Mr. Little, "are
fairly distributed, and the contrasts of grinding poverty with arrogant
wealth, which is the rule in Europe, is the exception here." 6 M. Simon,
who has gone through the experience described by Baron v. Richthofen,7
and is a pronounced Sinomane, ventures to generalize : " The most civilized
country is that in which, upon a given territory, the largest possible number
of persons have succeeded in procuring and in distributing as equally and
cheaply as possible, the greatest amount of well-being, liberty, justice, and
security."8 And he does not hesitate to claim this distinction for China,
since the food and furniture of ordinary villagers are as far superior to
those of Western peasants, as is their air of ease and good breeding, and
their command of civilized amusements. Industry is all but universal, and
a comfortable share in the fruits of industry is all but universal also.
Labour is too abundant to be dear, but as there are few or no highly paid
officers in the industrial army, the real wages of the rank and file stand at
a higher level in proportion than in countries esteemed to be of much
greater wealth, as well as more advanced industrial organization.
The conjunction of the two characteristics — good living and good man
ners — noticed by M. Simon, is not accidental. Confucius taught that the
1 The Middle Kingdom, S. Wells Williams, 2nd ed., vol. i. p. 259.
2 Letlres Edifiantes, vol. xviii. p. 311. .
3 Historic Sketches, p. 1 24.
4 Residence among the Chinese, p. 99.
5 Two Visits to the Tea Countries of China, 3rd ed., p. 96.
6 Through the Yangtsze Gorges, or Trade and Travel in Western China, by A. J.
Little, 1888, p. I.
7 China, i. p. 719, n. He observes that cultivated Europeans, after a prolonged
residence in China, are subject to a peculiar transformation. The Sinologist becomes
not merely a Sinophil, but a Sinomane.
* La Citl Chinoise, G. E. Simon, p. 3.

CONTEMPORARY CHINA. 293
first thing to be done for the people was to enrich them, and the second to
teach them. Instruction is more diffused and the wealth of the majority
of households greater than it was 2,000 years ago ; there is more of social
as well as economic equality than in Europe, and, at the same time — a
result which has been despaired of in Western democracies — the levelling
process has been attended by a general rise in the average level. It does
not appear from the Li Ki that the common people were seriously expected
to observe the rules of propriety in the period of " Middle Antiquity ; ''
they were to be moral and industrious, and as polite as they could ; and
since the days of the Warring States, there have been several periods during
which the masses can scarcely have been in a position to exercise the grace
of courtesy. Under the present dynasty it may fairly be said that all
classes are familiar with the rules of propriety.
The early missionaries contrasted the polite bows and good-tempered
proffers of help exchanged by Chinese peasants whose wagons came into
collision on an awkward road, with the oaths and objurgations in which
European rustics would indulge under similar provocation. Coolies who
are not acquainted address each other as "Sir," while friends are all
brothers. Mrs. Gray writes of Canton — the population of which is con
sidered one of the most turbulent in the empire : " In the streets I have
been much struck by the quiet, gentle deportment of the Chinese ; " x and
in the pottery districts, huge projecting trays of valuable and fragile ware
are carried safely through crowded streets because every one makes way
for the bearer.
In the country districts hospitality and kindness are the rule. Mr. T.
T Cooper, " an Englishman who has lived among them as one of them
selves," ventures " to tell his countrymen that to know the Chinese middle
classes and peasantry is to like them.2 . . . The people look well-
to-do, well and warmly clad in winter ; " they are " kindly, courteous, yet
impulsive, as easily moved to friendship as we now think to barbarous
outrage. . . Indeed, I must own that, for true politeness, the
Chinese of all ranks can compete with any nation and bear away the
palm."3 A French missionary in Northern China in the 18th century
speaks exactly the same language as the English tradesman whose ex
perience lies in Southern China in the 19th century. Amyot describes
the peasants as " polite, good neighbours, good relations," while as to
ordinary hospitality, " even a labourer has the ideas of a French grand
seigneur." * And so to-day, even in the poorest village, a fowl will be
killed for a stranger, and payment refused. Archdeacon Gray, in summing
up the mixed characteristics of the people, gives the front place to the
same trait, and judges them on the whole to be " courteous, orderly, in
dustrious, peace-loving, sober and patriotic."
The same writer's wife had the advantage over the majority of travellers
1 Fourteen Months in Canton, 1880, p. 16.
2 Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce, 1871, p. 3.
8 lb., p. 432. * Mlmoires concernant les Chinois, vol. iv. p. 318.

294 OWNERSHfP IN CHINA.
in China in being able to penetrate into the interior of Chinese households,
and so to judge how far the charm of Chinese manners is independent of
sex as well as rank ; she describes her Chinese hostess as possessing " an
indescribable grace and courtesy in all she did." Cooper speaks of the
charm of manner of a Chinese gentleman, and on this subject there is the
same agreement among diplomatists, and those whose circumstances have
restricted them to intercourse with the literary and official class, as between
the traders and missionaries who have cultivated the acquaintance of the
lower orders. In the words of Davis, " The ease and good breeding of
the better sort of Chinese, when they are on friendly terms, is very striking,
and by no means what might be expected from the rigid nature of their
ceremonial observances. These, however, sit upon them much easier than
might be imagined." x The preceding quotations show that this good
breeding is not restricted to the " better sort," but is a truly national
characteristic, promoted no doubt by the " republican " or "democratic'
spirit, which again strikes most intelligent tourists. The unfortunate Mar-
gary described the Chinese as " a reasonable people, who can be talked
into good humour very easily," 3 adding that, while a Chinese mob is rather
dangerous, " singly or in small groups, they are the pink of civility ; "
and again, " China is the true home of democracy, and the place where
fraternity and equality have taken root with advantage to the lower orders,
but at the expense of a good deal to the more respectable class."3 Mrs.
Gray comments on this feature in the tea saloons, where " rich and poor
occupy the same room, a man in silk at one table, a man in cotton clothes
at another,"4 and — what in England would be still more remarkable — the
same tariff of prices for both. In another place5 she describes how the
blind musician hired for an evening, asks for tobacco and calmly takes a
pipe before beginning his performance, to prove that " with all their
formalities, deference to rank, etc., the Chinese are a most republican
people." 1 The Chinese, by John Francis Davis. Supplementary volume, p. 109.
2 Similar incidents to the one commented on by Pumpelly are described by other tra
vellers, and his experience may be taken as representative. He and his companion were
visiting the coal mines north of Peking, and, after some annoyance from the curiosity of
the crowd, he and his companion were being hustled, and a few Chinese had even begun
to use missiles. " When they had reached this point, Murray stopped his horse, and
turning to face the crowd, raised his hand to motion silence. ' Oh people of Ta-hwei-
chang ! ' exclaimed Murray in excellent Chinese, ' is this your hospitality ? Do ye thus
observe the injunctions of your sages, that ye shall treat kindly the stranger that is with
in your gates ? Have ye forgotten that your great teacher, Confucius, hath said : " What
I would not that men should do to me, that would I not also do to men ? " ' The effect
of this exhortation was as remarkable as it was unexpected by me. In an instant the
character of the crowd was changed ; the hooting and pelting had stopped to hear the
barbarian talking in the familiar words of Confucius, the old men bowed approvingly,
and a number of boys jumped forward to show us the way. This scene will appear more
impressive by contrast, if we suppose a couple of Chinamen, followed by a crowd of
a few thousand American men and boys, and if we suppose the two strangers to turn and
quote in good English the similar passage of our Lord's Sermon on the Mount. The
reader may form his own opinion as to the success of such an experiment." (Across
America and Asia, p. 299.)
8 A. R. Margary, Journal and Letters, pp. 53, 131, 214.
1 Fourteen Montlis at Canton, p. 388. 6 lb., p. 273.

CONTEMPORARY CHINA. 295
It cannot be said that there are no social distinctions in China, but the
extent to which they are hereditary is so limited that every one has ances
tors, relatives and friends in every degree, and as these relationships are
not allowed to drop with altered circumstances, no degree of wealth or
rank can be depended on to save its owner from having to reverence a
social inferior as an elder brother. It is so common in China for poor
men to grow rich, or what passes there for rich, that law and custom pro
vide against the temptations which attend upon such changes. The usual
liberty of divorce is restricted in these cases, and the lawful wife who has
shared a man's poverty, is not allowed to be deprived of her position when
he has become able to contract a more brilliant alliance. The traditional
commentary upon an ancient formula for swearing friendship, illustrates
the same view : — ' ' By Heaven and Earth,
Before the moon and the sun,
By their father and mother,
A and B have sworn unalterable friendship.
Henceforward, if A in a chariot meet B wearing a coarse straw hat, A will
descend from his chariot to meet B. And if B on a fine horse meets A
bearing a porter's load, B will dismount from his horse as A from his
chariot." x Nor is this a fancy picture ; relatives from every class meet to
gether at stated intervals in the ancestral home, and the senior who performs
the rites of ancestral worship may be the poorest in the family. And it is
still, as in Amyot's time, a common occurrence for a labourer in village
dress to call upon an official relative and be received in the place of honour,
without awkwardness or embarrassment on either side.
It is now a commonplace that any family may produce a graduate or a
doctor, and it is matter of observation that in two or three generations the
descendants of officers generally return to the ranks of the people. Hence,
in the course of centuries, it would follow almost automatically that every
family should have acquired the tradition of behaviour suitable to the
grandparents or grandchildren of officers. Father Amyot explains that a
graduate sprung from a poor family was expected to assist his relatives in
their station of life, not to take them out of it. Those who neglected the
obligation were looked upon, according to him, like the holders of rich
benefices who give away nothing in charity, while those who discharge it
do so without any sense of humiliation or incongruity. The knowledge of
letters carries with it, of course, that of the rules of propriety, and this
knowledge gives a distinction like that accorded sometimes to noble birth
in the West, over-riding all disparity of wealth.
Thus, in the well-known Chinese romance " Two literary young ladies," 2
the second heroine is a peasant's daughter ; a bachelor uncle tried to
frighten her when she was to enter the household of the minister, whose
daughter is the first heroine. She quotes a disciple of Confucius to jus-
1 Les Chinois peints par eux-mlmes. By General Tcheng-ki-tong, p. 13.
2 Ping-Chan-ting-yen. Les deux jeunes files lettrles, tr. by M. Stanislas Julien.

296 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
tify her composure, and is rebuked for presumption, but rejoins, " Shun
was but a man ; I too belong to the race of men ; whoever knows how to
act can resemble Shun." Accordingly, when she is introduced to the min
ister as his daughter's purchased maid-servant, she stands on her dignity,
and inquires on what footing she is to be received, that she may know
what will be the proper salutations for her to give him ; and while that
question remains in suspense, she gives none. Of course, after this she is
received on terms befitting her accomplishments. Meanwhile, we learn from
the intercourse of the corresponding pair of literary young gentlemen that
" silk breeches " is a term of contempt applied to rich pretenders by poor
scholars, among whom a certain presumption against the learning of a fits
de familie might not unreasonably be entertained, so that the destined
bridegroom of the second heroine begins by scorning his wealthy comrade
in love and letters.
The case of the learned peasant girl in the novel exactly illustrates the
saying of the Rites that when the poor know propriety, their minds do not
become cowardly ; and there is a closer connection than we might at first
suppose between the diffusion of good manners and the equal distribution
of wealth. The man who treats others with courtesy and consideration
stands on too high a level to submit to be treated with insolence by his
inferiors in breeding. The learned lady's maid of Chinese fiction is a con
trast not merely to the Pamelas and Olivias of 18th century romance, but
to the beautiful and accomplished governess of contemporary novelists, who
is snubbed and ill-treated by illiterate employers. And if even a woman
" who knows how to act" can command respect in the most humble of
positions, a fortiori the Chinese father and husband will have a sense of
his own dignity, which is wanting to the wage-earning masses of Europe,
and might have saved them from acquiescing in the pitiably low standard
of comfort prevalent in the first half of the present century.
The Chinese workman has too much self-respect to give his services to
the community except upon terms which will allow him, for example, to
fulfil the obligations of filial and fraternal piety, and to enjoy the pleasures
and advantages of paternity. He works hard and continuously, but at
his own pace, in his own way, and for his own advantage. The industry
of the Chinese is proverbial, but Englishmen and Americans notice that
they are slow or at least leisurely in their methods of work.1
Men devote to every job the length of time that is required to perform
it comfortably. If their work is hot, they have boys to fan them while
they do it ; 2 if it is fatiguing, they engage a substitute at their own ex
pense while they rest from it;3 if it is dirty, they take a bath before going
home ; * if it is dangerous, the moral sense of the Empire requires that they
should let it alone. As a consequence, perhaps, of all these restrictions,
labour is not regarded as an evil ; it is necessary, with but few exceptions,
to all, and it should be fair, easy, and pleasant ; but in China, where language
1 Mrs. Gray, p. 28. 2 jb< p 3g6
3 La Cite Chinoise, p. 9. * Little, p. 283.

CONTEMPORARY CHINA. 297
never fails for the clear enunciation of popular ideals, a life without work
is not regarded as ideal.
The ideal occupations are still learning and agriculture, and the fourfold
classification of the citizens, into the literati, the cultivators, manufacturers,
and traders, is still quoted by native writers as applicable to modern China.
Agriculture is the root; industry and commerce are the branches; and this
is so far from being a mere rhetorical phrase that even within the same
household, agriculture branches out into industry and trade. The culti
vators display the technical skill of mechanics, and participate in the
profits elsewhere reserved to manufacturers and merchants. The same
resourcefulness and versatility, for which citizens of the United States are
notable, characterize the Chinese in their own country, and the cause in
both cases may be the same ; viz., that it is still possible in the oldest
country, as it has been hitherto in the newest, for every enterprising worker
to obtain possession of a portion of the raw materials of industry. The
resemblance ceases here, for China is emphatically a land of petty industry
and petty commerce, as well as of small landed proprietors. And indeed
it is self evident that this must be the case whenever wealth is equally dis
tributed, since no country is so rich as to be able to make all its citizens
wealthy. The standard of comfort for the labouring masses is no doubt fixed by
that of the smaller cultivators, who form one of the largest sections of the
population ; and it so happens that fuller accounts have been published of
the condition of this class than of the life led by artisans or other wage-
earners.

CHAPTER XXVI.
LIFE IN CHINESE VILLAGES.
Statistics relating to the total production of a whole country require a
very full commentary before they can be relied on for instruction, and
naturally China has not yet begun to throw the information possessed by
her Board of Finance into a form suitable for comparison with European
documents. But the authentic budget of a single peasant is quite as
valuable as — and perhaps more interesting than — -a statistical summary of
the production of so many millions. M. Simon had the good fortune to
make friends with such a household, when visiting Wang-mo-ki, a romantic
valley in Fo-kien, with pagodas to which the Chinese amateurs of rural
scenery are wont to repair to escape the summer heats of Fu-chow.
He was sitting under a tree eating an orange, when a peasant, whose
clothes and teapot were lying close by, offered him tea, and sent his son
to the adjoining house for some of the new season's buds. The tea made
from these is a choice luxury, denounced as an extravagance by the severest
moralists, and selling at 8s. a lb. straight from the grower ; but the family
retain a small quantity for their own hospitable use. It was the eldest son
who acted as host on this occasion, and his report of the well-behaved
foreigner, staying at the fashionable pagoda, induced his father to make
inquiries as to M. Simon's status and reputation.
On receiving a satisfactory reply, the peasants sent to inquire when they
might have the honour of calling on the European, an inquiry followed
forthwith by the despatch of a large visiting card bearing the name of
Wang-ming-tse and the arrival of father and son in robes of ceremony. On
the following day the visit was returned and the whole family presented to
the venerable stranger Si, who was constrained to remain and partake of an
ample refection, lasting for two hours and consisting of fish in broth, ducks
and chickens, pork and mutton, vegetables of different sorts, a variety of
entremets, sweet and pickled, with of course the usual bowl of rice, and
sweets, fruits, cakes, rice-wine, and liqueurs for dessert. Not less than two
half-days' work must have been given up to the exchange of visits, and the
food, though ample and good, consisted only of the usual holiday fare of
the family.
How many acres, we naturally ask ourselves, would an English tenant
have to farm, to be able without impropriety to sport visiting cards, pay
morning calls, and invite distinguished foreigners to luncheon — or afternoon
tea at 8^. alb. ? The Chinese cultivator, who allows himself these luxuries,

LfFE IN CHINESE VILLAGES.

299

owns and occupies 29 mow, or a little over 4J acres ! Nearly half of this
is planted with tea, but the remainder produces rice, corn, maize, beans,
rape, sugar-cane, yams, cotton, clover, turnips, cabbages, and small quan
tities of other fruits and vegetables not specified; pigs are fatted and
poultry reared in addition, and the total money value of the gross produce
of the 4§ acres is estimated by M. Simon at a little over ^285 ; but as
the purchasing power of money is not the same in China as in Europe, for
the more security he subjoins a list of the different crops by weight.1 The
outgoings or working expenses — including seeds, manures, hired labour,
maintenance of live stock, wear and tear and taxes — come to about ^65,
and the food of the family, including that of one female and two male
servants, to ^64. By what seems a rather liberal estimate, M. Simon
allows ^20 a year for keeping up the family wardrobe, the total value of
which is put at ^88, besides about ^18 worth of jewelry and ornaments.
They spend about £2 a year on religious ceremonies, mostly of the
Buddhist type, in the efficacy of which they half believe, and 24s. in
voluntary subscriptions for the repair of roads, bridges, canals, and public
buildings ; £8 a year is spent on theatrical performances and pleasure
parties. The family therefore spends at the rate of ^160 a year, in round
numbers, and has ^125 to save or to spend in marrying daughters and
starting sons in business, or enlarging the holding so that employment may
be found for them on the land as they grow up.
The capital which brings in this return is estimated at a little under ^800,
the land being worth ^440, and the house, furniture, tools, and personal
effects about ^350 ; the cultivator's profit is thus as nearly as possible 36
per cent, 3 per cent, per mensem — a fact which at once explains how in
modern China as in ancient Egypt, it was possible for the legal rate of
interest to be fixed at 30 per cent. The ample margin available for saving
also explains the universality of thrift in China. It is not in human nature
to save for the problematical wants of the future at the expense of present
needs ; but it is easy and natural, when all the customary wants of the
moment have been supplied, to economize the surplus earnings, which
will secure an equal portion of well-being for the years to come. Extreme
poverty in China consists, not in having to go without food, but in having
to eat plain rice. Our peasants eat four meals a day of varied and savoury
food, or five in summer-time, when the day's work begins at dawn, and
they have an appetite for two breakfasts before the noonday meal. The
hired servants have the same food as the family, and though economy is
universal there is no pinching or grinding ; there may be intervals of hard
ship, but there is no abject want and no terror of destitution.
1 Viz. 9,910 kilogrammes of rice (the kilogramme is rather over 2 lbs.) ; 2,100 ditto of
wheat ; 1,604 °f tea > 3°° °i 'arge beans ; 160 of maize ; 291 of oil ; 180 of sarrazin ; 230
of sugar; 180 of tobacco ; 5,000 of yams ; 9,600 of turnips ; 15,000 of cabbages ; 9,720 of
clover ; 1,095 °f °il cs^e > I,2°° kilo of stalks of sorghum, soy and sugar cane for fodder ;
150,000 ditto of rice and other straw, not all included in the money valuation, and 80
pieces of cotton stuff. Omitting the smaller and more valuable crops, in round numbers
the farm produced about 14 tons of straw and 10 tons of grain.

300 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
The vicissitudes to which such families are exposed and the relations
between other classes and the peasantry are clearly shown in the history
of M. Simon's friends. The house of Wang-ming-tse is one of many branch
families descended from a certain Wang who settled in their valley 800
years ago under the Sung Dynasty. The valley contains only 3,000 acres,
and supports a population of ro,ooo souls, that is, on the average, a family
of ten tb every three acres, so that the holding above described is quite re
presentative. The houses are nearly all detached, "like the villas between
Bellevue and Chaville" outside Paris. Schools are numerous, about one
to every fifteen families ; so are libraries, some of vvhich are in the keep
ing of the Buddhist pagodas, and others, also open to the public, preserved
in the ancestral halls of private families.
The commune is divided into ten quarters, each of which has a public
building, — market-hall, club, council chamber, caravanserai, theatre and
concert-hall, and, one might add, church, since it is used also for public
funerals and official solemnities, in fact for all occasions of public interest.
The central and largest of these halls is roofed with green enamel tiles,
and decorated with plaques of porcelain. Every family has genealogical
records and annals preserving the memory of its more distinguished an
cestors, and Wang-ming-tse could boast, among his, of at least two high
officials who had built bridges and dug canals for the benefit of their
native place, and received in return the honour of a public funeral; one of
them endowed a school and bequeathed his library to the public.
The father of our Mr. Wang was the fourth of fourteen children ; his
father was not rich ; he cultivated fifteen mow (2J acres), of which only
seven or eight were his own property, and agriculture was then less profit
able than now ; the canals had not all been made, the valley was less
populous, and people had to work harder with less result. It was therefore
decided that the younger sons should learn trades in the town. The eldest
and the third son remained to help their father ; the second studied letters,
and became a district governor ; the fourth, with whom we are chiefly con
cerned, was apprenticed to a carpenter and maintained by his family till
his earnings were sufficient for his support ; he and three younger sons
worked for wages, coming home once a fortnight and bringing their earn
ings to their father, who bought land therewith, and as fast as he got enough
to employ another labourer, one son after another was recalled to the home
stead. The youngest alone remained at Fu-chow, where he had become a
thriving merchant, but still continued to attend all family anniversaries ; at
the time of the narrative, he had bought a good property in the village,
which his eldest son cultivated, and on vvhich he had built his own tomb,
and when he retires from business, in favour of his younger sons, it is here
he will return to end his days.
Wang's father and his elder brother were married when the grandfather
died, but there were younger brothers and sisters to bring up, and the
family community was therefore not broken up. The eldest brother took
his father's place, and the family continued " to eat from one table"— an

LIFE IN CHINESE VILLAGES. 301
economy by means of which they were enabled to live in comfort on the
fifteen acres to which the family holding had been raised. At this time the
literary uncle was so well oft' that he was able to leave a part of his share
in the patrimonial estate to the community ; two of the sisters were married,
and there still remained at home five sisters and six brothers, four of whom
were married and had nine children between them. The family thus con
sisted of twenty-four persons, employing besides three field labourers.
The pinch came when the aunts were all married, and the merchant
uncle required his share of the inheritance to trade with, while the official
found his family increase faster than his salary. It was then decided to
dissolve the community. The inheritance was divided into eight equal
parts, each of the six younger brothers taking one and the eldest, who also
has the paternal house, two. The agricultural community, now reduced to
five brothers, agreed to buy the shares of the merchant and the official, at
a price to be paid off in three years. They also rented some neighbouring
fields under an agreement to buy and pay for them within a specified time.
The inherited and acquired land was then divided between the five
brothers, each of whom thus obtained a share of nearly four acres. The
brothers jointly built houses on each of the new properties, each taking
possession of his own as soon as it was completed ; during this interval
the community still existed, and by dint of the economies effected by its
means, all the land was paid for by the end of three years.1 After that the
interests of the brothers were divided ; they lived apart and each retained
the profits of his holding, but they continued to perform most of the labours
of the field in concert.
At this time the five families consisted of seven able-bodied labourers,
Wang-ming-tse, a lad of fifteen of whom it was proposed to make a scholar,
so that he did no farm work, and thirty-two women and children. Seven
men are not enough to cultivate twenty acres as the Chinese understand
cultivation, the brothers therefore bought a second buffalo and engaged two
more hired labourers. Times were, however, rather hard, especially with the
father of our friend Wang, who had a large young family and had moreover
to pay a larger proportion of the labourers' wages than the brothers, whose
sons could give more help. The payment for the land had exhausted the
family savings, and though there was always plenty of food — that came
from the land — money for any other expense was hardly to be got, and the
mother groaned over every cash that had to be laid out. The brothers
were all good friends, and would have helped one another in a pinch ; but
the struggling household could not bear to " lose face " by failing to take
its due proportion of all burdens, and the period of comparative hardship
was the more bearable as it came while parents and children were young
and ceased as the latter came of age to join the ranks of labourers.
1 This cost them in all nearly ^650, so they must have economized nearly .£220 a
year ; but, as we have seen, one brother was able to save £120 a year out of his smaller
holding, and it would therefore be easy for the five, to save twice as much out of the
larger holding they cultivated together. The youngest aunt received on marriage the
equivalent of nearly ,£70.

3o2 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
Wang-ming-tse himself was not very successful as a student. He failed
twice in the examinations, and then accepted a small post in the civil ser
vice which his uncle's interest procured. He married, of course, and had
four children by the time he was thirty ; he obtained some work as a copy
ist, but had not leisure enough to pursue his studies successfully, and besides
it was then too late to begin a successful official career. Accordingly, on
his father's death he decided to return to the village and take his share of
the inheritance. He was then forty, with an eldest son of fifteen and three
daughters whose marriages had been delayed for want of funds. His
brothers helped him to meet this expense, and for a while the community
was revived, the brothers living apart, but working in common and sharing
the produce of their industry. This arrangement, in spite of some trifling
inconveniences, would have remained unaltered but for the fact that Wang-
ming-tse's second son had a wife of captious and suspicious temper, who
induced her husband to believe that he did not get his fair share of the
profits. Under these circumstances there was nothing for it but to set the
young malcontents up in a house of their own, to learn by experience the
advantages of union, and occasion was taken of this change to separate the
interest of the still friendly brothers also. All this occurred six months be
fore M. Simon's visit, at which time the family consisted of the old mother
aged ninety-two, Wang-ming-tse and his wife, their eldest son Po-y and his
wife, and their six children, beginning with A-Pe, a son of eighteen, and a
daughter just about to be married.
This is the family whose budget we have just scrutinized, and it is worth
noting that the prosperous householder at its head belongs to the one sec
tion of the community which is said to supply a counterpart to the " de-
classes," the discontented failures of Western society, — the scholars, namely,
who have failed in the examinations. Apparently Wang-ming-tse's elder
brother must have died young, though the fact is not mentioned, as we find
him installed as head of the family on the abdication of the old mother
at the age of ninety, up to vvhich time she retained, at least in name, the
direction of affairs ; and her authority was still supreme upon such grave
questions of propriety as, whether it was possible to indulge the desire of
the inquisitive Frenchman to see the inner chambers of the house and the
family wardrobe.
This simple family history shows how accumulation and distress are
almost equally unknown in the Middle Kingdom. Each generation has
its season for saving, and its season for laying out its savings for the benefit
of the next generation. M. Simon's acquaintance with Wang-ming-tse
begins during the former period, and the uncle in business employs the
yearly economies to advantage, but they will not remain in his hands for
long ; one wing of the house is empty, the furniture having no doubt gone
with the discontented younger son ; before long Po-y's son, A-Pe, will be
married, and furniture will have to be bought for the third family living
under the ancestral roof; marriage portions will have to be provided for his
sisters, and as the boys grow up more land must be bought or rented, and

LIFE IN CHINESE VILLAGES.

3°3

the experience of the grandfather, with whom the story began, will repeat
itself, and so on sine die through fresh centuries.
Some may be inclined to inquire, as M. Simon did, what would happen
supposing there were no spare fields to be sold or let in the neighbourhood
just when the united household has grown too big for its boundaries, or if
the sons who had begun by seeking their fortunes abroad, chose to come
home and reclaim the fraction of the paternal acres their brothers had
bought? In the latter case, according to Mr. Wang, their original share or
its equivalent would be ceded to them at the price they received for it, and
they would be allowed time to pay ; the inconvenience to the brothers who
had bought the land would not be a valid reason for refusing to give it up ;
the obligations of kinship are taken seriously in China, and Wang evidently
regards such sacrifices as a matter of course ; the family is bound to come
to the assistance of its unsuccessful members, and the exercise of this virtue
comes all the easier, because prolonged experience teaches that all in turn
may need such help, and that many of those who have received it in their
need will make return with usury in their prosperity.
As to the other question, the difficulty of obtaining land may certainly
arise ; when it does, the family agree as to which of its members shall
migrate to the nearest village where land is to be had ; relations by marriage
are applied to, and as all China is not as densely populated as Wang-mo-
ki, somewhere or other the cultivator will find a settlement. If the family
is too poor to buy a plot of land at once, the younger son may work as a
labourer with a friend or kinsman, till he has saved the two or three pounds
which would enable him to rent and cultivate a tiny field, and it would go
hard with him if he failed from its proceeds to rent, and then to buy, enough
for the support of a family.
The family community generally remains undivided till the children of
the younger sons are beginning to grow up, after which, as already described,
the formation of branch families begins.1 The new householders continue
to take part in the ancestral worship of the old home, and the new family
only begins to perform similar rites after the decease of the father and
mother who were its founders. Relatives at a distance, like Wang's uncles,
the merchant and the official, receive an extract from the family registers,
showing their descent back for four generations, and this document would
entitle their descendants at any future time to apply to the family for help
or protection.
M. Simon ends his description of the happy family of Wang-mo-ki, that
if he had lighted suddenly in France upon a household living in the same
style of ease and comfort as Wang-ming-tse, he would assume them to be
the owners of 100 acres of good sunny land, or rentiers of ^200 or ^300
a year. But the valley of Wang-mo-ki may perhaps be regarded as excep
tionally favoured, and its popularity as a summer resort may improve the
market of the farmers. There are also many cultivators who occupy less
than 4! acres, holdings of 1 or 1 \ acres being by no means uncommon. A
1 Appendix K.

304 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
man whose holding was only one-fifth that of Wang would of course have
no wages to pay, and would require less varied plant, so that his outgoings
would probably not exceed or reach ^10. His household would be some
what less numerous and the food plainer, costing perhaps half as much as
Wang's, say ^32 a year, and as one-fifth of the earnings of the larger farm
is ,£57, there would still be a margin of £1$ for clothes, ceremonies,
amusements, and saving ; so that even the poorest little labourer, " having
a field," is well above the line of misery. In less fertile parts of the country
M. Simon found a farmer owning less than nine acres, who was saving at
the rate of ^75 a year, and another with 2\ acres who put by ,£32. 1
Other travellers, while less enthusiastic than M. Simon, give substantially
similar information. The author of "The Middle Kingdom" observes:
" The great plantation or farm with its landlord, and the needy labourer,
each class trying to get as much as possible out of the other, are unknown
in China. . . . There are very few plantations under the care of
rich landlords, but each little farmer raises tea, as he does cotton, silk, or
rice upon his own premises." 2 In the North " the soil is possessed in
general by small proprietors, who cultivate from five to twenty acres.
They pay a land rent to the Government of 2od. to 22^. per acre for
good ground." 3
Speaking of Southern China, Fortune observes in similar terms : "Silk is
produced not by large farmers or extensive manufacturers, but by millions
of cottagers, each of whom own and cultivate a few roods or acres of land
only and bring in their small parcels to the merchants, who sort and
arrange it in bales for home trade or export. . . . Our favourite
beverage, tea, is produced in just the same way ; " 4 and he goes on to
describe the family parties turning out to gather their own crop, with a
goat to carry the pickings of the smallest children.
Captain Gill speaks of the cotton harvest in another district, gathered by
families owning little plots about thirty yards square : " It would be impos
sible that it could pay to grow cotton in such small quantities, but the
Chinaman likes doing everything for himself; he will, if he can, grow his
own corn, grind it or husk it, and cook it on his own premises. If possible,
he will cultivate his own little bit of cotton and weave the cloth . . .
all his clothes are perhaps made by his wife and family." 5 Another traveller
notices the same trait in connection with the wheelbarrows propelled by
sails and used for porterage in some districts. "Each man owns his own
wheelbarrow, as the drivers do the carts, so that the system of personal
ownership and consequently awakened self-interest seems to prevail in
China from the land to the wheelbarrow." 6 It should, however, be re-
1 Another way of looking at the subject is to estimate the number of years a man must
work for wages in order to earn the price of land enough to live on. See post, p. 314.
2 S. Wells Williams, vol. ii. pp. 415, 128.
3 Rev. A. Williamson, Journeys in Northern China, 1870, p. 167.
4 Residence, p. 342.
5 River of Goiden Sand, i. p. 121.
8 Oxenham, Journey from Peking lo Hankcnv, 1868-9, p. 404.

LIFE IN CHINESE VILLAGES. 305
marked, in passing, that the versatility of the cultivator does not exclude
a considerable resort to the division of labour in matters where such divi
sion appears to the workers themselves as conducive to either economy
or convenience, the latter being as much considered as the former.
Captain Gill, after describing the cheerful effect of the petty trade and
manufactures carried on by the peasant households, adds the observation :
"We in Europe have found out that this is not an economical way of doing
things ;" and most European economists will, no doubt, consider it certain
a priori that whatever may be the wealth of China now, such wealth would
be increased if European methods for developing the resources of the
country were adopted. A detailed statistical inquiry does not, however,
bear out this view, whether we take the empire as a whole, which supports
without any importation of food a denser population per square mile than
Great Britain, or examine, with M. Simon, the produce of an individual
holding of typical minuteness. The Chinese do not farm, they garden ;
and when the soil of a whole empire is subjected to the intense methods of
cultivation restricted with us to market gardens, the gross production
admits of almost indefinite increase.
Captain Gill observed that while one acre of wheat in Europe will sup
port two men, one acre in China will probably support twenty.1 M. Simon
estimates the proportionate value of the whole agricultural produce of
the country as treble that of France, or i\ times as much per head of the
population, — and his estimate of the population is far in excess of that of
other sober and competent judges. Wells Williams calculated that over
a quarter of the country produces two crops a year ; 2 there is hardly any
fallow land, and there are large districts in which three, four, five, and even
six crops are got off the ground in succession.
This is accomplished partly by scientific economy and still more by the
unstinted use of labour. Sometimes one crop is sown as soon as the other
is above ground, and the first reaped before the latter is full grown. Still
more commonly seedlings are raised in small plots, and planted out as
soon as the ground is clear for them, so that each crop occupies the full
space for the shortest possible period. Where this method is followed a
crop is rarely lost, because if the first sowing fails from bad weather, the
plants can be replaced, and the harvest is only delayed, not lost. Even if
it is too late to follow the ordinary course, something else will be tried for
which the season may be more favourable, so that the land never fails to
produce something.
There is, too, another side to the versatile thriftiness of the Chinese
agriculturist. No labour is wasted in trying to make land, which is fit
for one purpose, serve another for which it is not fit. As a traveller
observed last century, "They do not improve the field for the seed, but
choose the seed for the field. Rice grows under water. . . . Nymp-
1 L.c, ii. p. 277. Accurately, according to M. Simon's report of Wang's farming, one
acre will feed twelve persons on a very liberal scale.
2 Middle Kingdom, i. p. 276.
VOL. II. — P.C. X

306 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
hsea and Sagittaria grow in water. . . . Sugar cane and potatoes want
a less moist soil. If it is still more dry, it will do for yams. Indigo and
cotton grow on the highest mountains. If a mountain should happen to
be too dry, it serves for a burying place. But if a soil be ever so wet, the
Chinese have a plant that grows in it and serves for food for men." Thus,
though the population seems larger than the country could maintain, the
fact is not so, and it might be said rather that the country could never
be too full of such inhabitants, since it is the number of industrious men
that makes a country rich, "for every industrious labourer, especially a
husbandman, always produces more from the grateful soil than he wants
himself." 1
This productiveness is not merely owing to a more favourable climate
and soil, for English market gardeners get several crops in the year off the
same ground ; and it is probable that if the whole of England were culti
vated like a market garden, the soil would provide food, at least vegetable
food, for the whole population without the need of imports. But to obtain
this result, it would be necessary to employ labour on the scale customary,
not in farms but in market gardens, or in other words, to employ in agri
cultural pursuits something like the same proportion of the population as in
China. The reason that this is not done is that under our present industrial
system such a course does not commend itself as profitable to the prin
cipal owners and occupiers of land. As things are at present, they derive
most profit from the land with least labour by methods which do not
extract from it the largest possible amount of food-stuffs. Our system, if it
were introduced in China, would probably result in a decline of the popula
tion, and in the production and consumption of food ; though it might
possibly also add to the wealth of the class directing such production as
survived. The Chinese system, if introduced in England (with a few
trifling modifications to suit the change of continent), would have exactly
the opposite tendency. It is for the philosophic student to judge which
of the two is morally and materially preferable.
As agriculturists, the Chinese peasantry have nothing to learn from
the scientific farming on a large scale which is considered most productive
in Europe. A fraction of an acre in rape or sugar cane produces heavier
crops2 than French enterprise with all modern appliances. The rude pro
cesses of manufacture in use do not allow the same quantity of oil or sugar
to be produced per cwt. of seed or cane, but the skill of the grower more
than makes up for the inferiority of the manufacturer, and the final account
shows the superiority to rest with the Chinaman. Even where he appears
at a disadvantage as extracting less sugar or oil than European manufac
turers, it is by no means certain that he really loses, or would have anything
to gain by selling his raw produce to a dealer for manipulation by steam.
The refuse of the cane and similar crops goes to feed the buffalo and other
1 Peter Osbeck, Voyage lo China (1751), pp. 231, 274.
2 La Cite Chinoise, pp. 32, 33.

LIFE IN CHINESE VILLAGES. 307
animals upon the farm, and so the nutritive value left in it by imperfect
methods of extraction is not wasted.
But even apart from this consideration, there can be little doubt that
the Chinese cultivator, who makes his own oil, sugar, etc., obtains more,
from the salesman or consumer, for the manufactured article, than he would
from a rival manufacturer for the raw material. Such a manufacturer must
sink a considerable capital in plant and buildings, spend large sums in
wages, and since his profits depend on a single article, his prices must
cover not merely interest upon all the above outlay, but also sums sufficient
to serve as insurance against bad seasons and bad trade. If the Chinese
cultivator did not manufacture, he would not be able to employ upon his
little plot all the brothers, sons, and nephews whose labours enable him to
keep every square yard incessantly employed in bearing something. If he
does manufacture, he and they divide the manufacturer's profit, and it is
practically certain that under these circumstances, the cost of production
is reduced quite in proportion to the slight inferiority in its results.
The homestead costs no more for being used as a factory or workshop ;
the machinery — if such a word can be used for the simple oil and grain
mills, the cotton spinning and weaving gear and the tea furnace of the little
farmer — is worth less than £1$, or less than £2$ if we include all the im
plements, plough, water-wheel, rakes, etc., of the farm itself. The interest
upon such trivial sums would be an imperceptible charge ; and in fact the
Chinese do not trouble themselves with a distinction which in this case
would be purely metaphysical, between wages, interest, and profits. But
the capital advantage of the combination of a variety of crops and a variety
of industries is that the family is insured against loss from the failure or
low price of any single crop, or from periods of enforced idleness, during
which the workers produce nothing and yet have to be fed. The cultiva
tors are well aware that some crops are more profitable than others, but
they also know that if every one gave up all his ground to their cultivation,
their value would fall, and the customary equilibrium of production, which
experience has shown to be generally advantageous, be upset.
The general outlines of Chinese village life have frequently been de
scribed, and M. Simon's account of the Wang family only adds, as it were,
flesh and blood to the dry bones of abstract analysis. The village and the
clan, or in other words the local and the genealogical bond, may coincide,
but it is not necessary or universal for them to do so. The authority
exercised by the clan chiefs has been described at length by Doolittle ; he
observes that in country districts properties are often not divided, so that
"there are very numerous instances in which whole villages are composed
of relatives, all bearing the same ancestral name. In many cases for long
periods of time, no division of inherited property is made, the descendants
of a common ancestor living and working together, enjoying and sharing
the profits of their labours under the direction of the head of the clan and
the heads of the family branches. . . . There may be only one head
of the clan. Under him there are several heads of families " dwelling

308 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
apart and independently. . . '-. " The head of the clan has the control
of all the heads of families in case of quarrels or criminal acts. If the
latter, who may be styled patriarchs, are not able to settle the quarrels or
knotty questions which arise among those directly subject to them, they
are entitled to call upon the archpatriarch, as the chief of the clan may be
styled, for his advice and decision, and the exercise of his influence is very
great." x
He adds that one motive which sometimes leads the head of a familv
to execute a division of the property during his own lifetime, is to avoid
disputes between the children, or between them and their paternal uncles,
who by law and custom are entitled to act as executors or administrators,
and might make the position of the eldest son of the deceased embarrass
ing. Practically, as we see in the Wang family, the community is only
kept together so long as it works harmoniously. Chinese custom, like
Chinese law, recognises " incompatibility of temper " as fatal to the union
which should prevail in families, and a childless person who regards his
natural heir with aversion and dislike is allowed to choose in his place
some one else of the same generation and degree of relationship. On the
same principle, if a daughter's husband has been received into the family,
and has lived with the parents as a son, he is allowed to take a son's share
in the inheritance.
The rights of the head of a family or clan are in the same way subject
to revision in the general interest. If the eldest son of such a personage
was an unsatisfactory character, dissipated in morals or of feeble under
standing, instead of committing the direction of the family to such
unworthy hands, a family council would be called, and some other son or
relative appointed in his stead, just as the emperor is required to designate
the worthiest of his sons to succeed to the throne. The disinherited son
would have the right of appeal to the tribunals, but such appeals from the
judgment of the family are very rare.
Family councils only take action upon serious grounds, and the reasons
which satisfy them are approved by any right-minded official. The author
ity of these councils — for the head of the family or clan does not act auto
cratically — rests, like that of all Chinese government, on the consent of the
governed. There is a proverb which Wang-ming-tse quoted a propos of
this very subject : " The law and its officers are not made for honest folk."
Respectable families settle their disputes by arbitration without going to
law, and even the mauvais sujets of the village prefer to submit to fines,
blows, or imprisonment at the discretion of their relatives and neighbours
rather than fall into the hands of Government officials, besides forfeiting
all the rights of kindred, as any one repudiating the authority of the
family must do. In the case of serious crimes, the offender may be
banished for a term or in perpetuity, and he may even be called upon to
save the family from the disgrace of a trial and conviction by committing
1 Social Life of the Chinese, Rev. J. Doolittle, vol. ii. pp. 225-7.

LIFE IN CHINESE VILLAGES. 309
suicide. Life seems so little worth living to a man outlawed from family
and home that even capital sentences are executed by consent.
Boundary stones inscribed with the name of the proprietary family
generally mark the division between the land of different owners, but even
in the absence of such stones, there is rarely any attempt at encroachment ;
if disputes upon this or kindred subjects arise, they are almost always
settled by the people of the place, or by a sort of congress, held on market
day, in which friends, relatives and any one else with special local know
ledge are invited to share, joining in the discussion and drinking tea.1
Public opinion is so just in its verdicts and so generally respected that an
appeal from the informal local parliament is almost unheard of.
The mayor of the commune or village headman is in a certain sense a
Government official. He has a salary (at the rate of £(>o a year, with a
population of 8,000), and is responsible for forwarding the taxes to the
district governor, and for apportioning any work on roads, tanks, or canals
ordered by the central Government. As already explained, he has to
decide disputes between neighbours and punish delinquents, besides en
forcing regulations about festivals and markets.2 If the village consists of
a single clan, the head of the clan may also fill the office of mayor or
headman; but in practice the authority of voluntary local or family groups
shades imperceptibly into that of the minor local officers recognised by the
State. The gradation does not possess the numerical regularity contem
plated in the Chow Li, but it is probably identical in character with the
institutions which that ritual professes to describe.
One singular result of the exaltation of agriculture and rural life in
China is that civilization, so to speak, has its head quarters in the country
rather than the town. People, according to M. Simon, live in cities, as it
were, accidentally to trade. But everything that concerns men most, such
as schools, libraries and museums, are to be found outside the towns, in
the open country. The retired official or merchant bequeaths his library
to the -village where he begins and ends his days, rather than to the city
where his working life is spent and his savings earned.3 Of course there
are born townsmen enough to endow libraries and museums for the city,
but the stream of countrymen seeking work in town is fully balanced by a
return stream of townsmen seeking rest and pleasure in the country.
1 Gill, River of Golden Sand, p. 2. 2 Middle Kingdom, i. p. 483.
3 La Cite Francaise, par le Lettrl Fan-la-gen, publil par G. Engine Simon, p. 67.

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE WAGES AND ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY.
The distinction between the cultivator and the artisan, the peasant and
the mechanic, is less strong in China than Europe ; the difference between
the standard of comfort in the two classes is probably also slighter, while
the difference, if any, may be in favour of the peasant. Chinese wages
are low when stated in European currency, but taken in connection with
the purchasing power of coin in China, they do not compare unfavourably
with the earnings usual in most European countries. Of course wages, as
well as rents, vary in different parts of the country ; but the following state
ments correspond fairly with the generalization of a Chinese writer, who
puts the average earnings of a workman at a franc a day, half of which is
enough to feed a family of five.
Carpenters and masons earn 20 to 30 cents a day, or about is., boarding
themselves. The usual wages of farm servants are about £3 ios. per annum
with food,1 and as prices in general are about one-fifth or one-sixth of those
in Europe, this can scarcely be put as less than equivalent to £1 a week.
Servants boarding themselves receive 4 to 6 dollars a month,2 or at the
same estimate of the value of money, ^50 to ^80 a year. But a man
appears well off with £8 6s. (25 taels) a year. Clerks and accountants
receive 10 to 30 dollars a month, or as much in actual money as many of
their trade in Europe, while food, clothing, and house rent are indefinitely
cheaper. There has been little or no change in the rate of wages in the last two
centuries, for the penal code specifies jd. a day as the amount which
officials must pay to carriers or workmen, whom they have wrongfully
pressed into their service for work required by them in their private
capacity only.3
A theatrical company, including perhaps thirty performers, is paid £6 for
a performance lasting 48 hours ; the theatre, as already mentioned in the
description of Wang-mo-ki, is provided by the locality, but the dresses are
often very costly, and the employers have a right to call for which pieces
they please out of the usual repertory. There are few villages so poor as
1 Doolittle, Social Life, i. pp. 61, 167. Wang-ming-tse gave his farm labourers £4
a year, and the maid-servant £1 12s., but the former did not sleep on the premises.
2 yia.rgary, Journal and Letters, 1876, p. 213.
8 The duration of a legal day's work is from the rising to the setting of the sun.
310

THE WAGES AND ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 311
to deny themselves once a year the amusement afforded by one of the
numerous itinerant companies of players, who set before the rustics exactly
the same interminable historic dramas as are played before a critical town
audience. Tuition fees in China vary, with the teacher's reputation and the age of
the pupil, from 2 to 20 dollars a year. Private tutors generally live in their
employers house ; they are treated with great respect and allowed to have
pupils from outside. " One who teaches thirty or forty boys at an average
fee of 4 dollars is doing tolerably well in China, for with the same amount
he can buy rive or six times as much of provisions or clothing as can be
bought in America." 1 This estimate would make the tutor's salary amount
to a nominal £32, in addition to his board, or the equivalent of ^180 or
thereabouts in the West; and this sum, which is not inconsiderable in itself,
represents a much better comparative position there than the same income
in a land of large fortunes and estates. Looking at the subject from the
opposite side, M. Biot estimated the cost to the parents of a year's schooling
at 15 frs. in a town, and at 6 frs., or its equivalent in rice, in the country.
In many cases the relation between tutor and pupil is maintained through
life, as indicated in the will of Yang-chi.2 Girls learn with their brothers
up to the age of eleven or twelve, but the sacredness of the teacher's
relation is maintained by the rule which forbids marriages between tutor
and pupiL
The sword, as well as the pen, receives comparatively favourable treat
ment in China, a soldier's wages coming to about £12, which, at the
rate agreed on by native and foreign authorities, represents between ^60
and £-]o a year. Both officers and privates receive half their pay in grain,
and six months of this is advanced in time of war, when they receive two
pays, one for themselves and one for their families — -an institution which
the British soldier, even when married " with leave," may well regard with
envy. Funeral expenses and pensions are given to the families of those
who die on a campaign ; but, as a missionary observed at the beginning
of the last century, there is so little real fighting that a berth in the army
was coveted, like a place under Government elsewhere, as a kind of sine
cure. As we imagine to have been the case in ancient Egypt, the soldiers
receive a kind of retaining fee in time of peace, but the army is only
really effective when its services are kept in constant request
Chinese workshops as a rule only employ a small number of operatives,
six or eight at most, and little is known of the working of the few factories
on a larger scale. Whenever it is feasible, the Chinese workman prefers
piece or contract work to day wages, because competition is so far con
trolled by custom that the system is not used as an indirect means for
reducing wages. The quality, the pace, and the price of the work are all
fixed by custom, and the gain to the piece worker is allowed to include
the whole price of the superintendence saved by the contract. The
1 When I was a Boy in China, by Yan Phou Lee, p. 52.
2 Ante, p. 202.

3i2 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
"driving" of a foreman or the "chasing"1 of a fellow-workman are
grievances which do not need to be resisted by the trade organizations
of China, because the industrial community contains no persons capable
of outraging custom in such a direction. If, for the sake of argument,
one imagines it possible for a wealthy manufacturer or landowner to aim
at introducing new forms or conditions of labour, unacceptable to the
operatives, and the dispute were referred to the tribunals, there can be no
question that the officials would condemn the innovation, and uphold the
demands of the trade union, in accordance with the old English legal
maxim, Cuique in sua arte credendum est.
It does not seem to have occurred to Chinese employers to regard as an
evil the natural solidarity of feeling which subsists among those who
follow the same occupation, and as a consequence their small essays in
the way of profit-sharing are not received with suspicion. M. Simon
mentions a foundry in Sz'chuen, at which a red flag is hoisted every day
that the output exceeds 36 tons; if it exceeds 40 tons, the workmen
receive a small ration of meat in addition to their regular wages ; if it
exceeds 45 tons, this ration is doubled ; and if the output reaches 54
tons, two glasses of rice wine are added to the meat.2
We are indebted to Mr. Little's good fortune for a glimpse of the
working of another Chinese factory on the larger scale. Like M. Simon, he
was invited to tea by a gentleman through whose land he was passing,
and then, without further introduction, pressed to stay the night. The
host in this case was a well-to-do gentleman farmer, of old Catholic family,
with an income in grain equivalent to about ^300 a year : this family pos
sessed also a silk-weaving establishment with twenty looms, besides spinning
gear, and a shop in Ching-king for the disposal of their wares. But they lived
themselves on the produce of their garden and farm, spending in actual
money only some ^30 a year. About 100 men were employed in the
factory of this family, earning ^d. a day and their food.
Coal-miners in the same district, working in two shifts of twelve hours,
receive about yd. a day and food estimated at half as much more. Their
wages are paid every ten days, pay-day being a holiday, so that ten days'
pay is given for nine days' work. As already intimated, they take a warm
bath on coming off their shift ; and the galleries are not allowed to be less
than 8 feet high, for the sake of ventilation, nor to go so far underground
as to incur the least danger of accidents to life or limb.3 The average
wages of miners at a coal-field in Shantung is gd. a day, while coal
1 English trade unionists use the word "chasing "to describe a tacit understanding
between a quick workman and an employer, whereby the former gets through an extra
amount of work in a given time, so that his earnings may serve as a pretext for requiring
the other men in the shop to take a lower price, — it the work is paid by the piece, — or to
turn out more work in the day, if it is paid by time. The system is unfavourable to skill,
as fast work that will just pass muster pays better than really sound production.
2 La Cite Chinoise, p. 116.
8 Little, I.e., p. 280. It is said that the stability of the Imperial Dynasty itself would be
imperilled if any human operation resulted in such a mortality as arises frequently in
Europe and America from mining or railway accidents.

THE WAGES AND ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 313
at the pit's mouth fetches $s. a ton.1 Pumpelly mentions a coal-field
in Chih-li where the miner's wages amount to one-third of the value of the
coal got by him, or about 2od. per ton, the output varying from 6 cwt.
to half a ton per diem, so that the earnings range from 6d. to lod. a day.2
The same writer roughly estimates the value of money at Peking as
twenty times as much as in New York and London; and, though this must
be an exaggeration, it represents fairly the impression of extreme cheap
ness produced by comparing the cost of travellers' luxuries there with the
prices charged to English and American tourists in English and American
capitals. Hired tea-pickers are paid $d. a day, but experts can earn 6d. to gd.
a day piece-work : wages of labourers in the tea districts range from 2d.
to 3d. a day with their food, which is almost always furnished by the
farmers, and which may cost about 3d. or \d. more, making the whole
day's labour amount to 6d. to yd? Women and children earn about
3d. a day for picking the dead leaves from tea. Boatmen, like the
cultivators in summer, eat five meals a day, and receive $d. a day in
addition.4 The boatmen of a salvage corps, or sort of Humane Society, on
the Yang-tse-kiang, are paid 6d. a day, besides 8s. for every living body
they rescue, and 6s. or 7.?. for every corpse. Junkmen in Sz'chuen get
8d. a day and five .cupfuls of cooked rice ; B and, though this class is
reckoned among the lowest of the population, Mr. Little found them
paying $d , to hire a flower boat to give them a concert. The pay of a
horse and man is given at gd. a day. In another district the men em
ployed in an Imperial gun-foundry earn 6d. a day and their food ; but
at the salt works, where, however, some perquisites in kind are probably
enjoyed, only 2d. a day and food.6
The Consular reports from Chinese treaty ports do not give the kind of
information respecting wages and the conditions of industry which have
been furnished of late years from other countries. Such details as they
give incidentally, however, confirm the statements of the mass of travellers.
The weekly wages of the operatives in a single cotton mill recently opened
in Shanghai range from 3s. to 4s. 6d. for women, and from 4s. 6d. to 12s.
for men. " All the operatives are Chinese, who have been trained to
the work within the brief period since the mill began, and they do their
work quite as efficiently as foreign hands, though in some departments
double the number is still required." 7 The leisurely character of Chinese
industry is also noted by an engineer, who observes that the " cost of a
given quantity of work is the same here as in Italy, for the Chinese,
1 Williamson, p. 117.
2 Smithsonian Contributions, vol. xv., art. 4, p. 20. In a lead-mine he found the day's
work consisted of eight hours, (lb., p. 103.)
3 Fortune, Residence, pp. 42, 198.
4 Blakiston, Five Months on the Yangtsze, 1862, p. 201.
6 Cooper, Pioneer, p. 66.
6 Williamson, Journey, p. 307.
'• 'Trade Reports, No. nai, Shanghai, 1892.

314 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
though they receive far lower wages, have not the strength of Italians,
and cannot do the same amount of work." 1
The absence of the middleman and the large capitalist in Chinese
enterprise is also illustrated by the account 2 of the soap-stone mines,
forty miles from Wenchow, the use of which has received a large develop
ment owing to the foreign demand for curios. The hills containing the
steatite used are owned by twenty to thirty families, who either work the
quarries themselves or employ miners. The stone is sold at the pit
mouth, while still soft, to carvers at a uniform price of about \d. the lb.,
and the carvings are hawked about by pedlars at the same (or even a
lower) rate than that at which the carvers themselves offer them in the
neighbourhood. The people are most prosperous in the most fertile parts of the country,
or where articles of commercial value, like tea and silk, are produced ;
" they have more comfortable houses, are better fed and better clothed
than they are in other places." "I never," says Fortune, " saw the people
as a whole better dressed than those of Hoo-chow. Every person I met
above the common working coolie was dressed in silk or crape, and even
the coolies have at least one dress for holiday wear." These observations
are confirmed by another authority. Notwithstanding the dense popu
lation of Honan, where the value of the wheat and cotton crop is very great,
wages, according to Baron v. Richthofen, are id. to i\d. a day more than in
Hoope and Hunan ; this shows that all classes profit proportionately from
the fertility of the soil — a result which, as Cobbett observed, was so far
from being attained in England that the rights of Common of the poor
subsisted longest in the counties which were by nature least attractive to
the moneyed encloser, so that the poor were best off on the worst land.
A well-informed writer1 has suggested, as a means of estimating the
comparative rate of real wages in China and other countries, that the
number of years should be calculated that it will take a young man,
beginning his industrial life at eighteen, without capital, to earn and save
enough to keep himself, marry, and buy land enough for himself and his
family to live on by their own labour — a way of looking at the question
which eliminates all uncertainty as to the purchasing power of money
wages. According to Dr. McGowan, whose iacts are taken from the
neighbourhood of Wenchow, the wages of able-bodied young men average
$12 a year, with food, shoes, and free shaving. Clothes may cost $4, so
that $8 yearly are left for saving. $180, the savings of ten years, will buy
one-third of an acre of land (worth $450 an acre) and implements to work it.
On this the man can live and save enough in another ten years to bring his
1 lb., No. 1044, Hankow, 1892. Chinese competition would not be dreaded by
Australian and American operatives if it were only cheap in proportion to its inefficiency.
It is, therefore, instructive to know that Chinese labour is really just about as cheap as
Italian labour, which also competes to an unpopular extent.
2 lb., No. 1212, Wenchow, 1893.
3 Fortune, Residence, pp. 300, 353.
* Dr. McGowan. Journal, China Branch, R. A.S., March, 1887.

THE WAGES AND ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 315
holding up to two-thirds of an acre, and to buy one-third of a buffalo. His
marriage would cost another six years' labour, so that starting with nothing
at eighteen, at forty-four the Chinese labourer may find himself indepen
dent and possessed of what, for him, is a competence. And of course few
labourers of that age start really with nothing, as their labour up to that
age is regarded as, at least, worth so much as to enable their parents to
provide the wife, which propriety requires them not to wait for too long.
These results do not presuppose so high a standard of agricultural
profits as M. Simon attributes lo Mr. Wang. In the rice region of Wenchow,
two-fifths of the land is cultivated by its owners and three-fifths let. The
tenants pay half the rice crop, one acre yielding over 19 piculs, giving
to each about $21 ; the owner pays the land tax, $1 80 cents, and the
farmer every other expense, while the latter takes the intervening crops,
worth $15. " The relations of landlord and tenant give rise to no ill-will ;
all are satisfied by arrangements developed in long bygone ages." But
the landlord's net rent does not represent much over 5 per cent, while
the landlord is quite frequently poorer than the tenant, as where one-
sixth of an acre is owned by a widow or a coolie and let out to the
cultivator of adjoining plots for half the yield of rice.
There is not a large class of women working for wages in China ; a
certain number are employed as domestic servants in the richer house
holds, where their status is much the same as that of the poor relations
who frequently fill a similar position. Girls and children are employed
in many quasi-domestic trades in China, and work is given out from shops
to be done by women at home. " For common embroidery not more
than 3d. a day is paid. For the finer work they never receive more than
gd. a day, working from early dawn till dusk." x In other words, a skilled
embroideress gets about what General Tcheng-ki-tong considers the
normal wages of a male labourer, — which wages are five times as much as
a man needs for the strict necessaries of life. There is in China, owing to
the universality of marriage (and of industry among husbands), no class of
women living on their own unsupplemented earnings, yet the price of
skilled feminine work is such as might suffice for the maintenance of an
humble family, and the lowest wages mentioned, apart from food, which is
generally included, are well above starvation point. During the short silk
season, a woman can earn is. a day by silk-winding.2
Food grows everywhere, and therefore, except in times of famine, the
imperfect means of communication are not a serious evil ; and, of course,
a large proportion of the people find employment in the transport of the
more valuable commodities, which fetch a price sufficient to cover freight.
Where the above rates of wages rule, prices are on a corresponding scale.
Plates of cherries are sold by the wayside in one district for half a far
thing; grapes in another for \d., or less, the catty; entertainment for an
evening, with tea, tobacco, and melon seeds, costs about \d. Seats at a
1 Child Life in Chinese Houses. Mrs. Brydon, p. 36.
2 E. H. Parker, China Review, a. p. 306.

3i6 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
theatre, for a performance lasting forty-eight hours, cost from 2 centimes
to 2d. A good meal of rice, ready cooked, costs \ d. ; coolies and bearers
can eat and drink their fill for 3d. a day,1 and the students at a military
school only pay 4^. a day for their board, which is considered ample by
the youths themselves.2 A respectable gentleman is only charged sd. at
an inn for a night's lodging and food, and the very slight difference be
tween the cost of food to the workman and to persons in easy circumstances
is the most conclusive proof possible that the former do not suffer from
want in this respect at least. There are no duties on food, and the
extreme cheapness of small commodities and services has the effect, fore
told by theorists, of making the workmen act to a great extent as each
other's employers.
It is common to see a man sitting in the street to be shaved, while a
cobbler mends his boot and a sempstress his jacket.3 M. Simon notes that,
as in the Middle Ages with us, there is little difference between the rate of
pay in trades and professions. A mason, carpenter, or agricultural labourer
earns almost as much as an artist or doctor. The fee of the latter may range
from 2d. to $d., but never higher. An art workman or designer earns $d.
or 612". a day without food, or in the country, with food, 2\d. to 3d. These
wages are rather lower than those previously quoted, but the following
prices from the same source must be taken in connection with them.
Beef, i\d. a lb.; pork, 3d. ; mutton, 2d. ; fish, id. to i\d. ; a fowl, 3\d. to
5<f. ; a duck, 4^. ; tea, ten cups, id. ; rice wine (a glass), id. ; bed at an
inn, hd. ; pair of velvet shoes, 2s. to 2s. 6d. ; wadded winter dress, 6s. to
8s. ; straw hat, \d. to a id.; summer dress, is. 8d. to 2s. ; cloak lined with
sheep skin, 6s. to 8s. ; pair of string working shoes, \d. to ijrf.4 The cost
of luxuries of persons of distinction is proportionately moderate. If a
gentleman wishes to entertain his friends, he invites them to dine at a
restaurant, where the usual price for a suitable entertainment is 3^. a head,
eight being the normal number of guests ; ios. a head is the highest sum
ever charged for banquets of great solemnity,6 and it must be remembered
that the restrictions on expenditure for show has driven Chinese luxury to
concentrate itself more in proportion upon the pleasures of the table than
is the case in Europe.
As agriculture runs into industry, industry merges itself in commerce.
Every Chinaman, as M. Simon observes, has half a dozen trades at his
fingers' ends, and can be at will cultivator, weaver, basket-maker, shoe
maker, or even smith. In sheds worth a few francs, they will cast cannon,
shells, or statues sixty feet high. We can judge how little change there
has been in the ordinary life of China by the illustration given in a letter to
Europe, dated 17 12, of the way in which families whose whole capital does
not exceed a crown, yet live decently on the profits derived from its judi
cious use. A man with two or three shillings spends them in buying sugar,
1 A. R. Margary, Journal and Letters, p. 210.
2 Les Flaisirs en Chine, p. 223. 3 Middle Kingdom, ii. p. 126.
4 La Cite Chinoise, pp. 108, 1 1 7. 5 Les Flaisirs en Chine, p. 225.

THE WAGES AND ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 317
flour, and rice, and makes them into little breakfast cakes, which the
labourers buy before dawn on their way to work. He clears perhaps lod.
on the job, and half that sum suffices to feed his family for the day.1
This man combines in his one person the functions of master and
journeyman baker, and of itinerant vendor and stall-keeper, and he is
entitled to interest on his capital as well as wages for his labour ; but his
demands in the former capacity are so modest that they do not raise his
total earnings above those of a mechanic; hence his prices are so low that
mechanics can employ him without extravagance, and actually experience
the economy of that co-operative cooking so often recommended to English
housewives. Fuel is really scarce in most parts of China, and therefore it
is cheaper for the poor to buy cooked food to eat in the streets, as in
ancient Egypt, than to employ the wife, as with us, in cooking at home.
If, however, an occasion presents itself when the community can do its
own cooking free of cost, it is seized with alacrity.
Wells Williams describes a method used for burning shells to lime,
which serves this purpose ; a wood fire is kindled under a heap of shells en
closed by a low wall, making a sort of furnace, and when, in a few hours
the shells are calcined, the villagers assemble round the enclosure to cook
their rice and vegetables over the burning pile. After all have profited by
the temporary heat, which costs nothing, the lime is taken out next morn
ing and sifted for the mason.2 Oyster, cockle, and mussel shells are also
burnt with coal dust for lime, which when mixed with oil makes excellent
putty, and is used for cementing coffins ; but any attempt to deal with the
by-ways of Chinese industrv would carry us too far afield.
Everything in rerum natura that can serve some useful purpose is put
to it, and nothing that can serve two purposes is allowed to stop short at
one. In England a few large fortunes are made by the utilization of so-
called waste material. In the neighbourhood of Birmingham "button
waste" is used for manure, but thrift in China does in small what is only
attempted wholesale in England, so that every scrap left from the carcass
of an individual ox or sheep helps to fertilize a private cabbage garden,
and the millions share unconsciously amongst themselves the profits which,
with us, enrich perhaps one scientific speculator out of ten.
Town sewage, which in England is employed at vast expense in poison
ing rivers and estuaries, is dealt with in the same way by private enterprise ;
it is collected, without charge, by the cultivators in the suburbs ; and in
deed, according to one traveller, the Peking householders, instead of pay
ing their scavengers, are by them supplied with vegetables in return for
leave to perform the service. The whole of China, it is complained by
some travellers, is rendered painfully malodorous by this national devotion
to the dunghill ; but by doing all their drainage on the surface, they at
least escape one danger of imperfect civilization — in the generation of sewer
gas. Tanks and water-courses are cleaned out frequently, for the sake of
the muddy sediment at the bottom, which is highly valued for manure.
1 Lettres Edifianles, xviii. p. 20^. 2 Middle Kingdom, ii. p. 56.

318 OWNERS HIP IN CHINA.
All these fertilizers are not, as in Europe, scattered indiscriminately over
the fields. " The Chinese manure the plant, not the ground," and consider
all time and care well spent which adds ever so slightly to the harvest.
In Chih-li, near the borders of Shansi, manure is made by strewing the
roads with chopped straw, which the horses trample and reduce to a kind
of litter. When nothing edible can be raised in the interval between har
vest and seed-time, a green crop is often sown for manure, as clover is
raised in Chusan on ridges of the rice-field in winter, to be pulled in
spring to plough and harrow into the wet ground.
If the profits of agriculture and industry are kept up by this incessant
and imaginative thriftiness, they are also kept down to the same sort of
level as vvatjes, because every Chinaman is as ready to sell as to make. In
Canton, where there is a large population living entirely on the water,
boats dealing with every kind of ware that can be required take the place
of shops. There are shrimp-boats, pea-boats, fish, cake, rice, meat, pork,
bean-curd, firewood, and flower-boats, over and above those which use the
water highway for trade or fishing. One article of commerce is water from
the river, taken up at the spawning grounds of fish. Such bucketfuls are
freely bought to be emptied into the ponds and tanks of villagers, where
fish are bred in sufficient quantities to make an appreciable addition to the
food supply. According to the missionaries of last century, a profit of
ioo per cent, was sometimes realized thus, and by the same means, a crop,
as we may call it, is snatched out of the shallows left by winter floods,
before they dry up and allow grain to follow fish.
Chinese society is not divided into employers and employed, but the
principle of unionism is familiar to and accepted by all classes. Voluntary
associations, partnerships, guilds, and corporations, like those of the Phoeni
cians and Berbers, are the rule everywhere. The " tendency to associate "
is a characteristic of Chinese life. " In trade, capitalists associate to found
great banks, to sell favourite medicines, or engross leading staples ; little
farmers club together to buy an ox, pedlars to get the custom of a street,
porters to monopolize the loads in a ward, or chair-bearers to furnish all
the sedans in a town. Beggars are allotted to one or two streets by their
unions, and driven off one another's beat if they encroach. Each guild
of carpenters, silkmen, masons, or even of physicians or teachers, works
to advance its own interests, keep its own members in order, and defend
itself against its opponents. Villagers form themselves into organizations
against the wiles of powerful clans ; and unscrupulous officials are met and
baulked by popular unions when they least expect it." 1 The trade guilds,
according to Mr. Little, are always obeyed, and the power of each is
" invariably exercised for the good of its members and the honour of the
craft." 2
There are two different kinds of association, bracketed by most foreign
ers as guilds, one of which approaches rather to the European chamber
1 Middle Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 87.
2 Through the Yangtsze Gorges, p. 294.

THE WAGES AND ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 319
of commerce, while the other is a "trade union" in the modern sense.1
The associations of commercial men regulate the conduct of their mem
bers in the same spirit and with the same minuteness as trade unions
proper, and the latter differ from the corresponding English societies in
generally including masters and workmen, united to uphold the interest
of the trade against society at large, instead of upholding the interest of
their several classes against each other. Wages and prices are fixed con
currently. A few years ago, in consequence of the depreciation of silver,
the Wenchow blacksmiths' union found it necessary to revise its bye-laws,
and, being a mixed society, in its own words, " agreed on a new tariff of
wages for work and price for our manufactured works." 2 That prices
should be left as they were and wages lowered, occurred to no one.
Disputes as to the rate of wages occur so seldom as not to give a raison
detre for separate workmen's associations. In large trades where these exist,
they regulate the conduct of the journeymen among themselves, in the
same manner as the masters' associations. The right of the workers to
combine has never been questioned, but on the rare occasions when they
combine against employers, it is for the decision of some particular dispute;
they unite for a strike, and disband when, as is almost always the case, it has
been successful. The local authorities have the habit of upholding the de
cisions of industrial and commercial organizations. When appealed to in
civil cases, they often refer the litigants to the town guilds for arbitration,
or themselves consult the guilds as to the lawful, i.e. the customary, usage.
It is assumed that such bodies as these would not threaten public harmony
by a strike, unless they had some substantial grievance ; and if the magis
trates interpose at all, it is to compel the masters to remove the provoca
tion complained of.
The rules of the societies vary with the different trades. The Wenchow
silk-weavers' and dyers' union lays down that "members of the association
shall work carefully with their best skill, and pay for silk that has been
damaged by bungling." A hand employed by one manufacturer and work
ing surreptitiously (? overtime) for another, is fined the cost of a play and
feast. One who steals silk from an employer is expelled the trade, and
the purchaser fined as before. Wages are paid two or four months in
advance, and members are forbidden to leave, or to set up for themselves,
till all advances are worked off. Weaving is to be taught before dyeing,
and no shop to have more than one apprentice at dyeing at the same time.
Manufacturers shall have but one member of their family learning the art
at one time. A shop of three looms may have two apprentices, not more.
Apprentices serve five years as such, and two years as journeymen.
Many unions limit the number of apprentices. Some, as the gold-beaters
at Wenchow, allow none but sons and nephews of workmen or masters to
learn the trade. Silk-weavers are forbidden to teach or employ women,
1 Chinese Guilds or Chambers of Commerce and Trade Unions, by I). J. McGowan,
M.D., Journal, ChinaBranch, Royal Asiatic Society, xxi. 3, 4 (March, 1887).
2 L.c, p. 172.

320 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
and needle-makers only allow the wives and daughters of members living
at home to assist in drilling needle-eyes. In some cases membership is
reserved to natives of a locality, and several of the provisions of this sort
are traces rather of old than new caste feeling.
The millers' union fines those who sell flour for less than the price
agreed on, and forbids its members to give credit to any one who is in
debt to another member. No abatement of price is to be allowed to large
consumers, such as pastry-makers, etc. ; and the code ends with the injunc
tion of world-wide appropriateness : " Let not observance of these rules be
a mere spurt at the outset and dawdling afterwards ! " The dyers' union,
in view of the fluctuation in the prices of indigo, admits that charges for
dyeing may change twice a year, but not oftener, and in the interval the
price agreed on must be adhered to ; accounts are to be settled, as we
should say, quarterly, i.e. at the end of the three terms into which the
year is divided.
Every half-century or so the societies generally find it necessary to revise
their bye-laws and make a fresh start. The Wenchow barbers' union dis
tinguished itself by abrogating a custom, without legal force, which forbade
them to attend the literary examinations, though they had to appeal to the
governor of the province before obtaining this satisfaction. The kittysols'
union and the pewterers' association, finding their trade suffer from the bad
quality of wares put on the market, passed regulations forbidding, under
the same penalties as underselling, the adulteration of tin with lead and
the manufacture of paper umbrellas of inferior quality. Fishing boats are
grouped in tens for mutual guarantee : ten tens elect a chief, and if a
member of the group wishes to sell his boat or turn her into a merchant
man, he must notify his colleagues and obtain their sanction. The Ning-
po fishermen's union prescribes the use of standard weights, and fines
boatmen who increase the weight of their hampers of fish by putting sand
at the bottom.
Unions in which piecework prevails limit the number of hours to be
worked by members ; weaving, for instance, must not go on after nine at
night. The hours of day workers are fixed by custom. Carpenters are
said by Dr. McGowan, from whom most of the above particulars are
derived, to work eleven hours in summer and nine in winter, and masons
for half an hour longer ; the latter, perhaps, because there are fewer days
on vvhich they can work, and in all cases it must be remembered that both
work and meals are taken at a leisurely rate.
We meet in China with most of the ideas and problems familiar to
economical science in the West ; but there is one conception that we have
not met with. Nothing is heard in theory or seen in practice of that
curious phenomenon which we call over-production. China producee
enormously, yet her markets are never glutted ; and however much she
produces, her power of consumption is capable of expanding to meet it.
Industry is universal, and therefore every one produces something more
than the equivalent of his own necessary maintenance. The result is uni-

THE WAGES AND ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 321
versal cheapness, and a corresponding extension of the purchasing power
of all classes. In a country without foreign trade, all increase of produc
tion means increased power of consumption, unless production is diverted
from the supply of things necessary and useful to that of unprofitable
luxuries or curiosities. But for universal cheapness to be an equal boon
to all classes, it is of course necessary that all classes should retain for
themselves substantially the whole real value of their labour.
We have seen that this is, to an unusual extent, the case in China.
The rules of most of the trade societies provide for the contingency of the
journeyman setting up in business for himself, and when this occurs fre
quently, it follows of course that the change of status implies very little
increase of wealth. The master workman pays so much in direct wages to
his own journeymen, and so much indirectly, in the price of goods, for the
wages of other employers' journeymen, that he realizes little more than a
decent and easy wage for himself. The employer in Europe and America
is more highly paid, and the natural course of exchange is disturbed by
the concentration in a few hands of gains in excess of the natural spending
power of their owner. The normal course is for producers to exchange,
one with another, the surplus produce of their several industries.
Putting 3,650 lbs. of rice as representing the necessaries of life for a year,
and supposing the cultivator to grow, single-handed, 5,000 lbs., or one quarter
of the grain crop of Wang-ming-tse, he has 1,350 lbs. left to spend on other
utilities and luxuries. Supposing the labour of artisans in general to average
the same degree of productiveness, the surplus represents the value of 135
days' labour. We will suppose the labourer to employ a blacksmith and a
carpenter for his farm implements ; a shoemaker, tailor, weaver, hatter,
kittysol maker, and embroideress for his wardrobe ; a butcher, baker, fisher
man, poulterer, and teaman for his dinner-table, besides doctor, school
master, actors, and other miscellaneous workers, to the number, say, of
twenty in all ; he can pay each of them the wages of seven days' work,
more or less ; about two thirds of the work of each of these employees of
the labourer will serve in like manner to buy rice, and the surplus, mutatis
mutandis, will buy the fruit of 120 days' work of various other kinds.
Increased production in any trade will cheapen any article for which the
demand is fixed, and therefore leave a larger surplus for the satisfaction of
other wants ; or if the demand is expansive, make the available surplus of
consumers go farther in gratifying their desires. The wrong thing might
conceivably be produced at a given time and place; but over-production in
general, if threatened, would cure itself by a general extension of leisure,
if the use of machinery or other discoveries made it possible for any
million of men together to make more things than they cared to use. But
this contingency would not need serious consideration while the natural
increase of population went on unchecked.
Unless it is maintained, that the division of labour and the use of
machinery have had such a stupefying and brutalizing effect upon European
operatives, as to make their individual additions to the national wealth less
vol. 11. — p.c. Y

322 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
than that of each leisurely Chinaman with his primitive tools, there is
nothing but custom — which is not unalterable in Europe — to prevent our
operatives from reclaiming for themselves a proportion of the wealth they
contribute to produce, equivalent to the proportion retained by mechanics
in the land of Wang-ming-tse ; and when this is done, over-production
will have as little terrors for the civilized West as for the indefatigable
Middle Kingdom.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
COMMERCE AND TRADE.
§ i. Chinese Moralists on Interest and Profits.
Artisans who retail their own manufactures and cultivators who sell the
products of the soil are not counted among traders. Merchants, or those
exclusively engaged in selling what they do not make or grow, are divided
into four classes — those engaged in foreign trade, in internal commerce or
transport ; those with wholesale warehouses, and those with retail shops.
The richest men in the empire belong to the three first classes, and they
are the only ones among whom any show of luxury is to be met with.
Even this is indulged in at their peril, for the owners of Wealth are looked
upon by Government as the dangerous class. Both law and custom are
unfavourable to accumulation, so that large fortunes do not remain long in
the same family. Heiresses are unknown, and thus, by a diametrically
opposite method, the same result is reached as among the Basques, for
fortunes are not increased by marriage. The Chinese millionaire is as
likely as not to leave thirty grandsons, equally entitled to share in his
inheritance, and the next generation can at most succeed to a modest
competence. The trading class as a whole is considered to stand lowest of the four
generally recognised, and before quoting Western accounts of Chinese
commercial morality and usage it will be well to ascertain what the atmo
sphere of authoritative native opinion has been, while existing practices
and tendencies were acquiring their actual character. The general
opinion of Chinese authors is that commerce should be as far as possible
restricted to the satisfaction of the real wants of the community ; and the
profits of trade are viewed askance as soon as they seem to exceed the fair
wages of a carrier, apparently because of a confused feeling that a man
who lives by profits only is a kind of usurer. The question of the morality
and expediency of lending money at interest has been copiously discussed
by Chinese authors, but it is usually considered in connection with the
wider problem, how to prevent commerce from ministering to luxury and
promoting inequality of wealth.
Valuable citations are given on this subject by Amyot in the Essay
previously quoted, but, unfortunately, in most cases without any mention
of the date of the authors referred to.1 One of them observes : " There is
1 Interest de T argent en Chine. Mini. cone, les Chinois, vol. iv. p. 299 ff.
3=3

324 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
the trade between families in the same place, the trade from village to
village, from town to town, from province to province, vvhich are easy and
natural on account of their proximity, and lastly there is the commercial
intercourse between different provinces, and between all the provinces and
the capital." (The " carrying of cloth to exchange it for silk " is as old as
the Odes.) These are necessary and legitimate, but great wealth obtained
and costly luxuries introduced by trade are evils and the source of evil.
Kwan-tse wrote, 2,000 years ago, " The money which comes in by trade
only enriches a country so far as it goes out again in trade. The ex
change of necessary and useful articles is the only commerce that can be
advantageous in the long run. The trade in objects of curiosity, ostenta
tion and refinement, whether carried on by barter or purchase, presupposes
luxury ; and luxury, which consists in the abounding superfluities of some
citizens, supposes the absence of necessaries among many others. The
more horses the rich have in their chariots, the more persons there are who
go on foot. The more vast and magnificent the palaces of the rich, the
smaller and more miserable the huts of the poor ; l for every table with a
variety of dishes, there are others reduced to eat plain rice." Foreign
commerce is only useful in so far as it brings serviceable commodities into
the empire. Thus, in the 18th century the northern trade in furs was
considered beneficial, and that with the Japanese and Europeans not so;
while the exportation of tea and silk were regretted as lessening the
quantity, and raising the price of that left for home consumption.
These writers contend that the luxury, introduced by commerce under the
Hans, would have ruined the empire if it had not been put a stop to with
the foreign trade that gave it birth. The tendency in this direction cannot
be eradicated, but it can be kept in check. Wise administration, Liaou-
tchi observes, consists in keeping the consumption of every class in the
customary proportion, and only allowing increased consumption when
production has been so increased that it is not indulged in at the expense
of any other class, and so does not appear odious to the multitude. The
Government, he holds, should visit with penalties and disgrace every
thing that tends to diminish the production of useful commodities, -e.g.
letting pleasure gardens occupy good ground, planting curious and un
profitable trees, gathering the buds of the tea-tree, and any employment
of labour which withdraws the peasants from the cultivation of the ground
and artisans from industries useful to the public.
Wan-yang, another denouncer of luxury, echoes Kwan-tse's argument :
" If the rich eat lamb, the poor will not be able to eat mutton." The
taste for luxury, he thinks, should be encouraged to spend itself upon
things which owe their value to other considerations than their intrinsic
cost— upon natural curiosities or articles rendered choice by the skill ex-
1 Cf. the remarks suggested to Wells Williams by the general aspect of Chinese towns.
He observes, without any reference to native opinion on the subject, that it is "socially
better, albeit less picturesque, that all the people should have decently comfortable tene
ments," than that hovels and palaces should stand side by side, as in Calcutta and other
centres of Eastern commerce. (Middle Kingdom, i. p. 56.)

COMMERCE AND TRADE. 325
pended in their manufacture, or the singularity of the material — and which
do not cause any injurious consumption. Common things have a well-
known market rate, but those which owe their value to fashion or con
vention can fetch a fancy price. People in the provinces will give any
money for hair-pins or earrings from Peking, and it is the same with old
vases and pictures, curios and delicacies for the table. The merchant's
30 per cent, is covered out of the profits he gets from retailing such
luxuries as these, and the interest, which obliges him to raise his prices, is
thus really a veiled tax on luxury.
This author's reasoning is scarcely sound, as the dealers in necessaries
may have to borrow, as well as purveyors of luxuries. But human socie
ties are moved by feeling rather than argument, and current fallacies are
quite as sure an index to the tone of national feeling as the soundest
reasoning ; so that Wan-yang's defence of interest may take its place by
the side of any equally sincere and equally inconclusive 19th century
plaidoyer for the principle of laissez faire.
Tsien-tchi, forestalling, in one sentence, the observation of Malthus and
the doctrine of free trade, points out that commerce is more necessary to
the empire, now that it is more populous and less productive in proportion
than in the ancient days, because, in order to economize its actual resources
to the utmost, everything must be produced where it can be produced
most cheaply. Tsien-tchi rather leans to the Innovator's view, that
trade should be organized by the State, and he uses this possibility to show
that it is a prejudice to look down on traders. It is a breach of the antique
equality in the distribution of property that the receipts of some should
exceed their expenses, so that they have money to lay by which they are
not obliged to use; but if this cannot be prevented, for them to withdraw
this surplus from circulation would impoverish the State, or at least inter
fere with the normal rate of exchange.
The rate of interest, which brings and keeps these sums in circulation,
is therefore a gain to trade. Besides, it is not only the rich who benefit
by the rate of interest ; the smallest sums can be utilized, and so the
labourer and the artisan do not lose their chance of profit, while the
savings, which they need to draw upon after the least misfortune, can be
recalled at the shortest notice. Even if the traders did not need to borrow,
they would be wise to do so, that all classes might be interested in the
success of trade.
" Why is it that we find everywhere such pains taken to facilitate the
safe and easy transport of goods by land and water ; why are all the deal
ings that concern the purchase, sale, or despatch of goods completed with
such promptitude and good faith? Why are the privileges of fairs and
markets so scrupulously respected, and the police regulations affecting
them so mild and effective ? Is it not because almost every one has money
invested in trade, or is interested in some one who has ? "
The same view is urged by Man-chan, another free trader, who observes
that the Government acts wisely in not taxing commerce, which would only

326 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
mean making the traders collect for it certain taxes in the form of increased
prices from the community. The toleration of high interest serves, he
thinks, as a substitute for State favour or encouragement. The fact that it
is possible to trade without owning capital makes the profits of trade to be
more widely distributed. If a rich man trades with his own money, he
employs the services of others, to whom he pays little, while they earn
much ; and so, while living in idleness himself, he reaps the whole profit of
their industry, while if he lends at a stated interest, the borrower, who does
the real work, enjoys the whole of whatever profit may be made over and
above. Here, again, the argument is unconsciously instructive. The ap
proach to equality of wealth in China is due to the extent to which the
poor man participates in the profits of capital, and to the fact that he can
borrow at the same rate as the rich; though it is not due to the fact that
his capital is, almost necessarily, borrowed.1
A certain minister called So-ling once lent 20,000 ozs. of silver from the
treasury to twelve little merchants, and when asked why he did so, said :
" In order that the public may not have to pay for the banquets, the enter
tainments, the varnishes, the concubines and slaves of him who has
monopolized the trade in silks." The rivalry between a number of less
wealthy dealers obliges them to compete with each other in industry and
skill, and not ruin the public with high prices. He continues, more
reasonably than Wan-yang, that the demand for objects of necessity is so
sure and constant that the capital is turned over frequently, so that the
trader can live in modest comfort, after paying 30 per cent, without raising
his prices ; it is only upon articles of luxury, for which the demand is un
certain, that the price might have to be raised enough to diminish the
demand, and this is by no means an evil, for, as Tchin-tse avers, the taste
for luxury is a leaven of death and decay in the body politic, so that the
masterpiece of political wisdom is to cause it to discharge by a few par
ticular wounds, instead of corrupting all the blood.
This plea for large fortunes may rank with Dr. Johnson's defence of
primogeniture, that it was well to make sure of having only one fool in the
family. But, as the Chinese say, " Old scholars are always scolding," —
praising antiquity, vvhich they know well, at the expense of their own age,
of which they know very little — for one reason, because its history is not
yet included in the annals. " Wretches," cries Lin-wen-hi, " burn your
annals, and let them end before you appear in them ! " He, writing under
the Ming, says that the poor alone are still kind and generous, and he
thinks the legal toleration of interest as bad as allowing fathers to sell their
children, or winking at the existence of idol temples and disorderly houses.
In the good old times, men lent for love and kindred, and disguised their
1 Of course, where the habit of using capital, and the knowledge how to use it profit
ably is not generally diffused — as in England — the possession, even without borrowing,
of a respectable little capital, like the deferred pay of discharged soldiers, confers no
benefit : a class that has lost the habit of utilizing capital does not know what to do
with it on the rare occasions when it is acquired ; in this, as in every other kind of work,
practice is required to develop skill.

COMMERCE AND TRADE. 327
gifts under that name (just as we are assured they do now), and if it is true
that they did so less readily under the Ming than before or since, the fact
would be fairly reckoned to the discredit of the period, which did in some
ways tend to reproduce the social evils of the Han Dynasty.
The Chinese distinction between loans for necessity, for convenience, for
trade, and for prodigality has been alluded to in a former volume. Loans
for need only were familiar in antiquity, and usurers then raised the rate of
interest to cover risks from bad security, and demanded " interest upon
interest," so that the loan might double in a single year. In theory, all
borrowing is bad ; but the character of the lender and the borrower, and
the object of the loan, really make more difference as to the good or evil
result than the amount of the interest. " Free loans have ruined more
poor people than interest at 30 per cent." '
To borrow may save a small cultivator or tradesman from selling at a
loss, or reducing the capital for his future operations ; but if the interest is
high, debtors of this character are as eager to pay as the creditor would be
to get paid ; while in the case of loans for prodigality, there is an opposite
advantage : " Nowadays it only takes a year or two to ruin the heir of a
mandarin or a great merchant, who might formerly have spent several years
in corrupting a whole town by his feasts and debaucheries." If a man is
too rich to need to work, and not learned enough to take office, the only
two alternatives open to him in private life are to squander his money
rapidly, so that he and his children must return to the paths of industry, or
to found a family, that will live modestly upon an income that diminishes by
subdivision in each generation, till the same result is reached. And though
the latter course is more praiseworthy in the individual, it almost looks as
if Chinese opinion considered the former to be better for society at large.
The rentier is not a favourite character with Chinese politicians : " The
worst governed State is that in which there is the largest number of iso
lated and egoistic citizens who are only bound to society by the boons
they receive from it . . . the moneyed citizen is the only idler ; through
the money he lends, he reaps without sowing, he enjoys the labours of
others without needing to do anything himself, like the moss or mistletoe
which feed upon the sap of the tree they cling to, and are never greener
or more flourishing than during its decay ; they fatten on the toils of others,
and a season of calamity is their good fortune."
The payment of interest on loans is said to date from the founder of
the T'sin Dynasty, the burner of the books ; it has any way been tolerated
for the last 1,500 years. The legal maximum is 3 per cent, per mensem,
and the usual rate, as already mentioned, 30 per cent, per annum. The
capital and interest remain the same in spite of the lapse of time ; any
breach of this law is punished by forty blows, or one hundred if any
artifice is used for adding the interest to the capital. Failure to pay the
promised lawful interest may also be punished with blows, but the judges
are expected to consider the circumstances and equity of the case.
1 Cf. ante, p. 184.

328 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
Leang-tsien says the ancients only tolerated low interest ; 30 per cent.
is usurious, and its official sanction is therefore not primitive ; in general
it is denounced by the literati, — who objected also to the Innovator's
loans at 4 per cent. — and defended by practical politicians. But the
hostility of the scholars is not proof positive against the antiquity of the
usage. Tradesmen may have lent and borrowed at 30 per cent, in the days
of Confucius or in those of Yao and Shun, and the Classics have taken as
little notice of the fact as the Egyptian monuments do, though one of the
Odes speaks expressly of the high and apparently dishonourable profits of
trade. Tchao-ing defends the legal rate by curious reasons ; he assumes that
money naturally brings in more profit than lands, and the license to lend
was, he concludes, aimed at and has actually secured " the chief good,
that the cultivators, the most numerous, useful, virtuous, and industrious
class, should possess lands enough of their own to live in comfort without
being rich, instead of continuing the miserable slaves of moneyed citizens
who fatten in useless idleness on the fruits of their labours." If money is
allowed to bring in no more than agriculture, every one would prefer the
security of land ; if, however, it is allowed to bring in all that persons
engaged in more lucrative pursuits can afford to pay for loans, there will be
less competition for land, and the poor- cultivator will more easily keep
and acquire it, and this is the aim of the Government, because land pro
duces most when cultivated by its owners ; the rich, who own more than
they can cultivate themselves, either neglect the land, in which case the
State loses its produce, or else they sublet it and lose the difference be
tween the rent and the full produce, which again is calculated to deter
them from acquiring land.
Tien-tchi considered that the legal interest gives only 4 or 5 per cent
more than the cultivation of good ground, and he justifies the interest
charged for money as corresponding to the rent charged for the use of
land or buildings. Money, like a shop, is worth what it will fetch. A
shop in the great street close to the chief entrance to the palace, in the
capital, is rented four times as highly as one in an ordinary quarter. It
belongs to me, he says, and I might profit by the advantages of the
position; if I don't, it pays the merchant to pay me for letting him enjoy
them, and so with the money lent to traders. But the application of this
doctrine is only tolerated in practice, provided the rent and the interest
demanded by the owners of land and money do not exceed what the
borrower and tenant can pay with advantage.
Even in the middle of the 18th century, before the development of trade,
manufactures and shareholding, consequent on the application of steam,
had revolutionized Western industry, — these views appeared sufficiently
singular to the French missionary to be worth expounding at length. M.
Simon bears witness that they still prevail. The Chinese cannot accept
the notion that a temporary benefit should give rise to a permanent
liability ; hence public loans of the European type are impossible in China.

COMjMERCE AND TRADE. 329
Terminable annuities would be less objectionable ; but after paying 3 per
cent for 33! years, no more interest would accrue. " We do not recognise
a loan at perpetual interest," says a scholar : " private persons lend, with
out interest to friends, and at 30 per cent, to strangers, but for three years
only ; at the end of that time the capital is repaid in whole or in part — if
not, the borrower has no more credit — and that is the only penalty. The
Government could not borrow on such terms, and would have nothing to
gain by doing so ; besides, who could lend to it ? There are no idlers, and
every one invests his own money more advantageously than the State could
do tor him. If," he added, " large loans are usual in Europe, it is evident
that lands and savings are concentrated in the hands of a small number of
persons not in a position to utilize them themselves, — a reflection which
must suggest to a Chinese thinker the most serious forebodings as to the
future of such countries, and lead him reluctantly to conclude that justice
is not the rule in the West."
In China, as M. Simon observes, the taxes are collected and spent —
there is no more finance than that — so when Kien-lung wished to indulge
in the amusement of a Tatar campaign, he waited till he had got the
money in hand to pay for it The European fundholder is the child of an
unholy alliance between idle capital and a ruler who wishes to do more
fighting than he can afford to pay for, — and the multitudes toil that this
bantling may be fed. The Chinese not only profess, but act upon the
doctrine of our economists, that high taxation is injurious, and that it is
better to allow the money " to fructify in the pockets of the people."
They pay something like half a crown a head in taxes or one-tenth of the
amount raised in France, and allowing for any difference in the purchasing
power of money, still, less than either the Swedes or the Swiss, the most
lightly taxed of European nations.
Their objection to the concentration of great wealth in a few hands is
analogous to our objection to high taxation. The same percentage of
profit which gives decent comfort on a small capital gives on a large one
riches that can only be spent by luxury, and, if not so spent, clamour for
reinvestment apart from their owner's labour. If this is undesirable, then
the State must — as in China — do all it can to prevent the accumulation of
wealth, by "squeezes" and more direct means. And it is supported by
scholars and public opinion in doing so, because, however admirable the
benevolence and liberality of a great capitalist, like How-qua, may be, it
is no less true of his coffers that of those belonging to the State, that the
money filling them would be better " left to fructify in the pockets of the
people." It may perhaps be true of economical systems, as of modes of government,
Which e'er is best administered is best ;
in any case China has prospered in spite, or because, of her fidelity to
these theories, even as English commerce has thriven under a regime of
individualism and free trade, and the United States under one of indi-

33o OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
vidualism and protective tariffs. The object aimed at by So-ling has been
in the main secured, and while in China comparatively few persons live
in idleness on the income of their investments, an extraordinary number
live on the profits of small capital which they administer themselves. If
we compare the above statements of what the Chinese themselves con
sider desirable, with a dispassionate observer's description of the result
actually attained, we shall be forced to admit that the Chinese realize their
own ideals more nearly than any other people do.
"The great body of the people are obliged to engage in manual labour
in order to subsist, yet only a trifling proportion of them can be called
beggars, while still fewer possess such a degree of wealth that they can live
on its income. Property is safe enough to afford assurance to honest toil
that it shall generally reap the reward of its labours, but if that toil prosper
beyond the usual limits, the avarice of officials and the envy of neighbours
easily find a multitude of contrivances to harass and impoverish the fortu
nate man, and the laws are not administered with such strictness as to
deter them."1 It is frequently argued in the West, that thrift and industry
would cease if the rewards now earned by the pursuit of commerce and
manufactures on a large scale were materially reduced. But the experi
ence of China seems to show the apprehension to be unfounded, since
there is no lack of aspirants for fortune, willing to take their chance of
being " squeezed," while among the masses, who are not exposed to that
danger, thrift and industry are more developed than in any other country,
to all appearance because in no other country is so small a proportion of
the rewards of those virtues concentrated in the hands of a minority.
The high rate of interest has not prevented a most democratic extension
of credit. The cumbrousness of the currency, as already explained, led to
an early development of banking. Private banks are allowed to issue
notes at discretion, and in Southern China, and more especially in Fu-chow,
these were at one time used almost to the exclusion of coin, their value
ranging from is. 6d. to ^200. More recently, their use has been super
seded by bank-bills from Hong-kong. But even in non-commercial
Peking, Mr. Pumpelly was surprised to meet "an institution which he had
supposed was peculiar to the United States, namely, an endless number of
wild-cat banks, issuing paper currency."
Besides this application of private enterprise to make good the deficiency
of the currency, the primary forms of legitimate banking business, taking
deposits and discounting bills — drawn at first hand for goods received —
have received an extraordinary extension. Australia is the only country
which approaches China in the extent to which banks are used by the
working class ; and in the facilities accorded to such clients, China cer
tainly stands alone. Every tradesman, farmer, and thriving artisan has a
banking account,2 in which he deposits his savings as they accumulate ;
interest is calculated on the daily deposits, and at the same rate for all sums,
1 Middle Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 63.
2 La Cite Chinoise, p. 122.

COMMERCE AND TRADE. 331
however small.1 Deposits can be withdrawn without notice, and the interest
is calculated up to the day of repayment, and the depositor is always allowed
to give a reference to his banker in doing business with strangers. But
this is not all. It is customary to allow every client to borrow, upon his
note of hand, twice the amount of his deposit. A young man, who has
been earning wages for six or seven years, probably living at home the
while, can easily save from ^12 to £\$, and with double that amount a
great deal of business can be done in China. The owner of land can
borrow on its security, endorsing the title-deeds with the amount of the
loan. The pawnshops also serve as bankers to the poor, or those who do not
wish their temporary embarrassments to be known. There are three, or
rather four classes of these establishments, the most respectable of which
pay a substantial fee to the treasury for their license, and are used, even by
the wealthy, as warehouses, owing to the dryness and security of their
store rooms, as they are required to restore all pledges in as good condition
as when they were received. Furs are frequently sent to these establish
ments for safe keeping during the summer. The rate of interest charged
is 3 per cent per month, except during the winter quarter, when it is 2 per
cent, a reduction which may partly be owing to ideas of humanity, and
partly to the desire for brisk business, fostered by reduced prices. A
pawnshop was once compelled by the members of a so-called " robber
society " to give back their cotton clothing to the poor who had pledged
it in winter. This society professed, like Robin Hood, " to plunder the
rich for the relief of the poor;" but pawnshops serve the latter purpose to
some extent without compulsion.
They are much resorted to about the New Year by householders who
have a difficulty in balancing their accounts for the year, and persons who
have no valuable effects to spare themselves do not hesitate to borrow
from their neighbours some article to pledge. It is considered churlish to
refuse such a request; but the borrower is held bound in honour to redeem
the pledge in due time, and, if by any unforeseen calamity he is disabled
from doing so, he is bound to let the lender know, so that he may redeem
it himself. Government officials are allowed, if they have money in their hands not
immediately required for use, to lend it to the pawnbrokers, or even to
private merchants, at 12 per cent, the interest being expended upon public
works. Of course there is always a chance of corruption in connection with
such loans, and it is said that officials pledge cast-off garments, which they
do not mean to redeem, for sums two or three times their real value, the
demand for the bribe being well understood by the proprietor of the
pawnshop. Pawnshops of the second class receive a license in return for a small ex
penditure for the defence of the district. These charge 30 per cent, interest
' Interest is calculated only from the following day in the case of deposits made after
4 p.m., and a slight discount is paid on bills cashed early in the morning.

332 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
upon valuable deposits, and 20 per cent, upon those below a certain sum
(about £2), a curious and characteristic reversal of the usual European cus
tom of driving the hardest bargain with the poorest customers. Goods, if
not redeemed, are sold at the end of twelve months by Dutch auction. In
the third class of pawnshops, they are sold after six months, and the interest
charged is very high, and payable every ten days. Cripples and blind
persons are allowed to keep pawnshops without a license, and in these
private establishments loans for short periods can be obtained for 8 or 10
per cent. Respectable families raise money for such exceptional expenses
as marriages or funerals, or to meet the emergencies of trade, by pawning
their valuables. But there is yet a third way of raising capital for trade,
much resorted to by those who have no money to open a banking account
and no valuables to send to the pawnbrokers.
This is an institution not unlike the "money clubs," much in favour with
the poorer class of workers, especially women, in England. Its invention
is said to date from the Han Dynasty, and by its means any one who
requires to raise capital for a specified purpose, if he has a single friend to
answer for his probity, can hope to do so by the formation of a temporary
limited liability company ad hoc. This friend enlists a second, he a third,
and so on, till ten are collected ; the party are then invited to tea by the
projector, who explains his scheme, and if it is approved, the necessary
funds are subscribed by the associates. If all are friends, the arrangements
may be as simple as in British workshops ; each partner undertakes to
subscribe 100 taels in ten instalments, the projector of the company, for
whose benefit it is started, receiving the whole amount in the first year, and
paying off ten taels a year for the remainder of the time, the other associ
ates drawing lots for the repayment in turn of the lump sum.1
1 his method takes no account of interest, and is therefore not sufficiently
exact to serve in the case of large sums required for the purposes of trade,
and all sorts of combinations are adopted to let each partner receive back
the exact value of his contribution, the only essential point being that the
projector receives at once all the subscriptions of the first year. In the
Lettres Edifiantes 2 there is the description of a club of this kind with seven
partners, of whom six subscribe respectively 15, 13, 11, 9, 7, and 5 pistoles
each,— 60 in all ; the seventh, who is to be helped, receives this sum to
trade with, and repays 15 pistoles a year for the next six years. The
highest subscriber receives the 60 pistoles the next year, and repays 13 per
annum for the remaining 5 ; then the third partner has the 60 and repays
n for the remainder of the term, so that at last each has paid 30, 40, 50,
60, 70, 80, or 90 pistoles, and received 60, the difference between the
larger and the smaller sums representing the value attached to the advance
of the capital. The seventh partner, who contributes 5 pistoles yearly, has,
1 The resemblance to the Dravidian kuri, or lotteries, is obvious, and the institution in
China may easily be as ancient as the characteristic form of mortgage also sliared with
the people of Malabar.
2 Vol. xviii. p. 218.

COMMERCE AND TRADE. 333
for instance, lent 30 pistoles without interest, and receives 60 at the end of
the time in compensation. On the other hand, the man who was penni
less to begin with, pays a corresponding 30 out of pocket in the last two
years, after repaying the original loan by instalments of 25 per cent. ; but
the actual interest is only at the rate of 5 per cent, for the six years, and
considering how rapidly the capital of a small trader is turned over, the
borrower in the ordinary course of things would have no difficulty in meet
ing his obligations. M. Simon gives in his appendix a variety of other
combinations ; but the principle is the same in all cases.
It is exceedingly rare for one of the associates to fail to keep up his
subscriptions. A breach of faith would be punished by disgrace and
exclusion from all such societies in the future ; but if any of the associates
are in temporary difficulties, they can usually arrange to change turns with
one of the others, or hand over their place in the group to some one else,
who takes their liabilities and repays the sum already advanced. These
clubs are used for all sorts of purposes as well as trade, — to buy a daughter's
trousseau, to pay for the education of a promising scholar, or to stock a
new farm ; and in no case do the shareholders, as they may be called,
take any part in the adventure to which they have contributed funds.
General Tcheng-ki-tong speaks of these money clubs1 as a kind of
private lottery, in which there are no losers, and says they are resorted to
mainly by persons of what we should call the middle class. The rich, of
course, do not need them, and the very poor are assisted on such occasions
as marriages and funerals by collections made with less formality among
friends, relatives, and fellow-workers. According to him, forty or fifty
persons join, and no interest is paid, and he gives as a reason why people
are ready to take part in such lotteries, that in China " on ne place pas
l'argent a interets ; " so that those who stand out of their money longest
lose nothing, while all find it convenient to let their savings accumulate
till they reach a serviceable sum. The clubs are looked upon as friendly
and meritorious institutions, and accordingly, if there is a difficulty in
making up the necessary number of partners, it is not unusual for Govern
ment officers to be applied to, to make up the deficiency, which they
readily consent to do.
To sum up, the popular credit system of China secures these enviable
results. In the West it is only the man who already has more capital than
is good for him who can confidently count upon having the savings of the
public committed to his keeping. Unlike So-ling, the British public gives
its tens of thousands of silver and gold that it may have to pay for the
" banquets, the varnishes, the concubines, and the slaves of him who has
monopolized the trade"— in beer, gin, diamonds, or whatever else may be
the "boom" of the moment. In China, on the contrary, thrift is stimu
lated because its fruits are practically secure, and its reward is enjoyed in
full from the first. Capital is, so to speak, decentralized, and the multi
plicity of small sound investments, conducted by near friends and relatives,
1 Les Plaisirs en Chine, p. 277.

334 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
leaves no reserve of savings to be engulfed by hazardous speculations.
The fraudulent promoter is unknown, and all the savings, that are lost by
his wiles to the small capitalists of the West, find in China safe employment
in sustaining the enterprise of petty dealers and producers.
§ 2. Chinese Merchants of the Present Day.
The occupation of a merchant is looked down upon by landed proprietors,
by the literati, and by those who have risen to official rank through their own
talents. Yet no merchant can be guilty, without fatal loss of reputation,
of the roguery common among officials.1 Every official has been more or
less of a scholar, and the scholar as such is respected ; he only forfeits
the esteem earned by his degree if he is guilty of gross corruption or
tyranny; to retain it he need give no proof of distinguished virtue, it is
enough if he refrains from crime.
With the trader the case is very different ; the 300 per cent profit of
commerce, of which the Ode speaks, is not highly esteemed : the rulers
and teachers of the people were prompt to see that it is not, as a rule, the
most virtuous persons who are likely to grow rich, and the possession of
wealth therefore raises a presumption against— as the possession of learn
ing raises a presumption in favour of— its owner's virtue. Now the ortho
dox scholars of China, if they have not succeeded in training a select class
of disinterested public officials, have succeeded in diffusing throughout the
population a profound and intelligent appreciation of public and private
virtue. All classes have participated in this boon, and the average mer
chant, like the average cultivator, considers wealth to be a less valid title
to consideration than learning or virtue.
The official is admired for his learning whether he be virtuous or not,
and, as most men are content with one title to admiration, after attaining
the degree which wins both office and admiration, they dispense them
selves from further effort. The merchant is not admired for his wealth ; and
wealth without consideration, in a land where luxury is unfashionable and
display only invites spoliation, has so little charm that it is comparatively
easy to dispense it liberally. A rich man, who parts courteously with his
cash at every fitting opportunity, is counted benevolent, and earns by that
virtue the consideration denied to his wealth. And the high character
justly accorded to Chinese men of business is probably the product of
these various influences.
The Englishman is taught to say, " Business is business," and has the
impression that it is unbusiness-like, and therefore improper, to let moral
ideas or friendly inclinations interfere with the execution of contracts. A
Chinese merchant of high character, on the other hand, sits quite as loosely
to his legal rights as an aristocratic landowner who aims at popularity
in England. Indeed, we should seek vainly in any class in England for
parallels to the generosity of How-qua and his countrymen.
1 Fan-kwae at Canton (1825-1844). By an old Resident, 1882, p. rt Middle King
dom, li. p. 389. ' r j .5

COMMERCE AND TRADE. 335
An American merchant having got into difficulties after many years
transactions with this gentleman, was set free to return home unem
barrassed by the Chinese Rothschild's tearing up promissory notes to the
value of $72,000, with courteous assurances of regard for an honest man
who had been unlucky. English bankers and merchants will philosophi
cally "write off" a bad debt of .£14,000 or more, but it is not among
their customs to cancel such an obligation voluntarily, for the sake of sav
ing a respected correspondent from poverty or dishonour ; yet even from
the commercial point of view, there is something to be said for the
Chinese usage. Solvent and honest dealers probably lose as much in this
country by bad debts — not to say much more — than the Chinese surrender
by free gift ; but while the Chinese give to respected friends who will make
the best use of their liberality, Englishmen lose most by their most un
scrupulous debtors, who are allowed by English opinion to live, between
their bankruptcies, in a style beyond the reach of average honesty.
Another story of How-qua's large-mindedness is interesting, because it
involves the waiving of a contract, not a debt. A friendly skipper arrived
at Canton with a cargo of quicksilver, at a time when the price of that
commodity happened to be much depressed, so that even if the whole cargo
was sold, the price would not suffice to fill the ship with tea for the return
journey. How-qua proposed to take the quicksilver at the current price
and lend enough besides to complete the tea cargo, and this agreement
was booked. While the ship was loading, a sudden rise in the price of
quicksilver took place, upon which How-qua cancelled his former offer, and
paid for the quicksilver at the ruling price, which was enough to cover the
requisite quantity of tea. The difference to the skipper came to about
£6,000. In 1841, when the Hong merchants were called upon to contribute to
the ransom paid by Canton, How-qua's share came to $1,000,000 ; he gave
three notes endorsed to his order on an English firm at Macao ; and at
the same time sent a friendly hint to this firm to accept the notes before
they became due, so as to clear a few hundreds by the discount.1 The
disinterested love of a bargain and the good-natured wish to let the ill
wind of their national quarrel blow a good thing into his correspondent's
hands is very characteristic, and in connection with the gentlemanly liberal
ity already described completes the picture of a typical Chinese merchant
Sir George Staunton tells a story of Chinese gratitude showing itself for
a slight service on an equally liberal scale. An English officer had suc
ceeded in recovering a debt due from an American to a Chinese merchant,
who in return helped him to dispose advantageously of his private ven
tures in several successive voyages. Not content with this, the merchant
after some years asked why his friend had not yet obtained command of a
ship, and on learning that this could only be done by purchase at the ex
pense of some thousand pounds, at once gave him a draft for the amount,
to be repaid at his convenience. If foreign barbarians are dealt with thus
1 Fan-kwae al Canton, pp. 42-5.

336 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
generously, it may be taken for granted that, among themselves, the
Chinese will show even more consideration and delicacy.
Merchants in China, Captain Gill observed, rely implicitly on one
another, and they are prepared to show similar confidence in foreigners.1
Even in small towns, a traveller has no difficulty in cashing a letter of
credit, without more formality than giving a receipt, and may count on
politeness and hospitality as well as business facilities. After taking tea
and being invited to dinner by his banker, under such circumstances,
Cooper writes : " I could not help contrasting the reception my host had
given me, a total stranger and a foreigner, with that which he would pro
bably have received at my hands, had he visited me in Shanghai, where,
as is usual with us Englishmen, he vvould very likely have had to come into
my office without the least polite encouragement from me, and have trans
acted his business standing, after vvhich I should probably have dismissed
him with a gesture of impatience." 3
An old resident in Canton describes his reminiscences of the China
trade before Treaty days in equally favourable terms. " From the facility
of all dealings with the Chinese who were assigned to transact business
with us, together with their proverbial honesty, combined with a perfect
sense of security to person and property, scarcely any ' old Canton ' but
finally left them with regret" 3 The old Hamitic plan of doing business
through a go-between, which would otherwise seem strange to European
traders, was rendered necessary by the want of a common tongue, and the
old resident speaks as highly of the " linguists," employed by order of the
Government, to keep the barbarians from getting into trouble with officers
or natives, as of the compradores.
The compradore or go-between of those days was a sort of head steward
or agent responsible for all underlings and himself giving a Hong
merchant as security. In the course of twenty years the writer heard of
only one robbery by a compradore. The institution of the so-called Co-
Hong, the thirteen merchants through whom all the China trade with
England was transacted, exemplified the time-honoured principle of mutual
responsibility. The Hong merchants were responsible to the Government
for the customs, and goods bought from other Chinese merchants could
only be shipped through them. One of the thirteen was sponsor for each
foreign resident, and the purchases of the East India Company were
divided among them by fixed agreement, based on their respective means,
How qua holding fourteen shares. As much as £55,000 was paid at
Peking for the position, though they were exposed to large " squeezes " for
repairs to river banks, etc.
The conduct of the Hong merchants was inquired into, " lest they ex
acted illegal duties and incurred debts to foreigners which they could not
1 M. Simon had occasion repeatedly to decline the offer of loans made to him by
wealthy Chinese, who thought he might want such accommodation after so long an
absence from his native land.
2 Travels of a Pioneer, p. 42.
3 Fan-kwae, p. 26.

COMMERCE AND TRADE. 33-7
repay ; " and, in fact, if one of them was unable to discharge his obligations,
the Co-Hong would have held the creditor harmless. The Chinese Govern
ment has a singular idea that, as it were, la civilisation oblige, and they do
not think it right to let any barbarians suffer through their subjects. There
is a penalty for making firearms for sale to the wild hill tribes ; and the
Chinese are not allowed to lend them money or, in selling goods to them,
to "demand an unreasonable price ;" and the same "vigilant care" for
the welfare of the strangers was at the bottom of some of the restrictions
which appeared most irksome to British independence and self-will.1 The
"old resident" proceeds: "As a body of merchants, we found them
honourable and reliable in all their dealings, faithful in their contracts, and
large minded." Wells Williams speaks in similar terms : " Chinese mer
chants are acute, methodical, sagacious and enterprising, — in large deal
ings exhibiting that regard for character in the fulfilment of their obligations
which extensive commercial engagements normally produce." 2 Another
writer, who was struck with the thrift and enterprise of the labourers, who
set up as traders or contractors with what they have saved from very
moderate wages, adds, " they combine the shrewdness of the Jew with the
versatility of the Yankee." 3 Cooper, who writes from personal experience,
rather than as a mere tourist, says that a slight acquaintance with Chinese
merchants is enough " to convince the impartial observer that they are
not only keen and successful speculators, but just and liberal minded in
their dealings with those who, by a similar line of conduct, gain their con
fidence and respect." *
There are some few Chinese firms with a really large capital, contributed
by several partners, but as a rule large associations with few and irre
sponsible governors are distrusted, and it is preferred to keep the business
within such limits as not to preclude personal control by the parties
interested. Large joint-stock companies are therefore as rare as small
1 That the Government is sincere in these professions appears from the fact that it re
paid to the persons imposed on, the money irregularly borrowed in its name by General
Tcheng-ki-tong, when attached to the Chinese embassy at Paris. This gentleman, the
ostensible author of some French works on China, combining Gallic wit and Chinese
patriotism in a very piquant fashion, was, unfortunately, destined to give one more example
of the danger to Chinese morals from the contaminating seductions of the West. He be
came a favourite of Parisian society, and the r&le being an expensive one, was tempted
to use his official rank to negotiate a loan, which he applied to his own use. When the
Chinese Government repays in full money which it has never asked for or received, the
anxiety of financiers that it should begin to borrow in good sooth ceases to be surpris
ing. The same number of the Times which reported this scrupulosity also quoted a
Memorial from the Governor of Chinese Turkestan, describing how the state of things
existing in Kubla's time is reversed and "the stupid Mussulmans are plundered by
Chinese usurers." He proposes that the law forbidding loans to aborigines should be
extended to the Mahomedans, who are equally little able to take care of themselves,
and that existing debts should be overhauled by the local authorities. When the claim
is reasonable, interest and principal to be cleared off, without further increase, by
monthly instalments of 3 per cent. ; when the interest already received exceeds the
principal, the latter only should be repaid ; and when compound interest has been
charged, and the debtor is very poor, the debt should be cancelled outright.
2 Middle Kingdom, ii. p. 389.
3 Pumpelly, Across America and A*ia, pp. 253-5.
4 Pioneer of Commerce,^. 1 29.
VOL. II. — P.C. Z

338 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
working partnerships are common. Iron foundries require more capital
than most industries, and the one already mentioned x possessed a capital
of over £2,000, with a staff of more than 300 workmen; and paid about
£25 a year royalty to the treasury, not as rent, but for permission to
extract the metal, which is imperial property. £2,000 to £4,000 is a
large capital for China, and is usually owned by three or four associates,
who are either working partners or relatives, and thus scarcely richer than
the peasant Wang, though they may have a larger income by turning over
their capital more frequently.
Retail shops are a necessity for a dense and busy population, and the
severest moralists raise no objection to their existence ; though adultera
tion, if carried beyond a certain point, is still punished, as in the days of
Chow, and mercers who sell bad silk are bracketed, in the Buddhist
scheme of crimes and virtues, with physicians who administer inferior
medicines, householders who refuse to allow slaves to buy their freedom,
and those who remove landmarks or wantonly waste rice.2 Shops of the
same kind occupy the same quarter in the city, and their owners form a
sort of amicable and unaggressive "trust," which discourages underselling and
establishes a "fair price." " Only one price " is a common inscription on
signboards, and as the general public in China consists of persons actively
engaged in commerce and industry, knowledge as to what prices are
really to be called fair is more generally diffused than elsewhere. The
precept, "You should not beat down articles below the proper price,"3 is
one of " twelve sentences of good words " in popular repute. The regu
larity of the demand for certain goods, based on unchanging custom, also
helps to keep prices firm. De Mailla describes how, at the season when
winter or summer clothing is left off, a man will bring 6,000 caps of a
suitable sort and sell them all in three or four days ; and when the demand
is thus fixed and calculable, the dealer does not need to force a sale by
low prices or recoup himself by high ones for the risk of an unsuccessful
speculation. Some of the provisions of shopkeepers' guilds have been mentioned in
connection with the subject of trade unionism. The guilds consisting of
dealers only are of two kinds — the so-called " compatriot guilds " uniting
the natives of a distant locality settled in any town for trade, and those
embracing persons of the same trade in their native place. The former
class may include compatriots of different callings, but most generally the
colony exercises the trade for which its native place is famous, and so has
a common calling. At Shanghai tea and silk dealers formerly had a
common guild ; but since the Tae-ping rebellion, the silk men formed a
guild of their own. The compatriot guilds were first formed under the
1 Ante, p. 312. 2 Gray's China, pp. 151-6.
8 The force of custom in fixing prices is even carried to a ludicrous extent : thus,
according to Gill (ii. p. 191), the price of goods in the market of I-chang is said never to
vary ; things are always so much a pound, but, to make up for this uniformity, the
number of ounces to the lb. fluctuates freely, like the size of the standard bar of iron
among the Berbers.

COMMERCE AND TRADE. 339
Tang or earlier, to protect the common interest of strangers ; but the
functions of all are much the same.
The guilds conduct prosecutions on behalf of members, and defray a
portion of the legal costs, provided the members are unanimous as to the
justice of the claim ; but a formal petition from the guild generally secures
redress without litigation. The permanent secretary of all these societies
is a gentleman of literary rank, entitled by his degree to visit and negotiate
with Government officers in the name of his clients. Their revenues are
raised, like those of the Phoenician merchants and shipowners, by regular
voluntary taxation, generally about one-tenth per cent, of the income of
each firm; and, to assess the tax, in some cases the books of all the
members are regularly inspected by clerks taken in rotation from the
different firms. In others the members swear to the accuracy of their
contributions ; but if any one is suspected of having sworn falsely, a ballot
is taken as to his being called on to produce his books in verification, and
if he refuses, he is expelled the guild. The Shanghai tea guild requires
its members to send to the guild an account of their sales during the past
month, with a subscription in proportion ; and, if understatements are dis
covered, the penalty is a fine of fifteen times the amount due originally.
Members are required to submit their disputes to arbitration instead of
going to law, and to boycott any firm that has been expelled the guild.
Various guilds regulate the length of credit to be given, the rates of
discount, the warehousing of goods, weights and measures, and the like ;
and some interdict to their members the (illegal) practice of fictitious
buying and selling, or time bargains. The Shanghai tea guild requires
that tea which has been paid for in advance shall be insured against fire.
Foreign firms are to be boycotted while engaged in litigation with
members. All the rules dealing with the weight and quality of consign
ments have the object of securing good faith ; and in 1883 a quarrel
between the tea guilds and the foreign merchants on this subject ended in
the well-deserved victory of the former.
They proposed to rectify the complaints made of variable and false
weights used by Europeans, by themselves appointing a trustworthy
foreigner at a liberal salary, to act as umpire in all disputes concerning
tea-weighing. The foreigners objected to outside inspection of any kind ;
the Chinese guild refused to trade on any other terms; and after a
temporary suspension of business, by which the former were of course the
losers, they surrendered at discretion. As merchants the Chinese have
no prejudices, and discriminate readily between honourable and un
scrupulous aliens, and a foreigner who entrusts his quarrel with a guild
member to its committee of arbitration is safe in their hands. The mere
threat of such an appeal on the part of a merchant brought a Chinese
broker, who had done a piece of legal but dishonourable cheating, at once
to terms.
The Shanghai bankers' guild suppressed a custom of lending for ten
days at 36 per cent ($10 for ten days' loan of $1,000, or $1 per

340 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
diem = 365 per 1,000 per annum), and decreed that the rate of interest
should be published monthly after discussion at a guild meeting.
Gambling in ingots and dollars is forbidden, and at Ning-po, where it
had reached a great pitch, the bankers' guild put a stop to fictitious
dollar-selling. They were vehemently opposed by a class of brokers not
belonging to the guild, who had no other occupation, and it is character
istic that the latter were pacified by temporary aid from Government
while seeking for other employment. The preamble of this guild dates
the profession of money dealing from the constitution of the Treasury
under the Chow Dynasty ; the importance of providing that " those who
have should be able to exchange with those who want, and that small
coppers should be exchanged for large ones," makes this occupation the
pivot of commerce.
Mainly owing to the growth of foreign trade, the use of paper money,
and so of free banking, was discontinued after the Tae-ping rebellion, by
the resolution, of the bankers themselves, to restrict all transactions to
ingots and dollars. They conclude to conform to Shanghai monetary
usages, and " to be equitable and diligent in the right mode of acquiring
wealth." All sets of rules begin with a moral preamble to the effect that
the ways of trade should be truthful, equitable, and sincere, " because well-
conducted commerce yields threefold profits." The prosperity of the
corporations shows itself in the fact that guild halls are among the most
ornamental of Chinese buildings.
Shopkeepers are allowed to paint their names and wares on the city
walls by way of advertisement, as well as on their signboards, which are
as florid in style as the nomenclature of the streets. Archdeacon Gray
instances in Canton the "Street of Golden Profits," of " Benevolence and
Love," of " Longevity," of '' 1,000 Grandsons," of " 1,000 Beatitudes," of
"10,000 Happinesses," of "Ninefold Brightness," of "Accumulated
Goodness," etc., etc.1
Bankruptcy is considered disgraceful and even criminal, but there is
little law on the subject and arrangements with creditors are generally
made privately.2 Government dues take precedence of private debts,
otherwise all creditors share equally ; future property is liable unless
expressly excepted by agreement, but the creditors can only claim absolute
control over the debtor's personalty. The law places difficulties in the
way of the sale of land for debt, and if the bankrupt retained no means of
subsistence save an hereditary plot, he would not be deprived of it. On
the other hand, every effort is made by debtors and their families to avoid
insolvency, and a merchant having land, but intending to continue in trade,
would obtain the consent of his relatives to its sale. In the rare cases
when a merchant might be brought to the brink of ruin by a series of
adverse contingencies for which he was not personally to blame, his family,
or, failing that, his fellow-merchants, or even his creditors themselves,
1 China, p. 8.
2 China Review, vi. p. 136.

COMMERCE AND TRADE. 341
would come to his assistance — a fact vvhich explains the severe view taken
of those who are actually allowed to become bankrupt.
Amyot observes : " Our missionaries have been repeatedly amazed to
see how readily people here waive the repayment of a debt." Public opinion
obliges the local Shylocks to relax their claims on honest men who have
been unfortunate, or the family of the debtor comes to an arrangement
with his creditors. The tribunals give no encouragement to the hard
creditor, and always allow time for repayment unless the creditor himself
is in want Money lent by friends is generally paid off in three instal
ments, without interest. But if a debt has been forgiyen, and the creditor's
grandson is poor and the debtor's well off, the former may apply for
repayment, and it would be thought dishonourable to refuse ; so that the
inequalities of successive generations tend to compensate each other
instead of perpetuating themselves.
The officers of the State are dealt with liberally ; salaries are advanced,
gratuities given on occasion of special family demands, and temporary
loans, taken from the public funds in their hands, are sanctioned, at a low
rate of interest, which is generally excused on one plea or another. Loans
in cash or corn are made to the soldiery in bad times, and the repayment
of these is also often excused or stopped gradually out of their pay. Such
debts are never passed on to the children, and both capital and interest are
excused on all sorts of pleas. Part of their pay is held back to the end
of the year to enable them to meet the expenses of the season.
Ordinary commercial credits do not extend beyond the current year.
In preparation for the festivities of the New Year, every tradesman exerts
himself to call in his debts and to clear off his goods ; it is the moment
of genuine " clearance sales," 1 universal stocktaking and drawing up of
balance sheets. Debts for household expenses may be dunned for at the
New Year, and even the very poor try to avoid this disgrace ; and General
Tcheng-ki-tong mentions among the sources of cheerfulness enjoyed at this
holiday season, that the people have all paid their debts. Closing the shop
door before New Year's Day has the same significance as for a banker to
" put up his shutters," and " taking the door off its hinges " is a way of
forcing a tradesman to pay his debts. This annual settlement prevents the
unlucky from falling, and the thriftless from sliding into the headlong road
to ruin ; the former are given for a moment a foothold by which they can
recover themselves, and the latter are stopped by a barrier which few per
sist in overstepping.
The postal service of the country is managed entirely by private enter
prise, the Government couriers not being allowed to carry any but official
despatches. Letters are now conveyed for a moderate charge to all parts,
not very rapidly, but with complete security.2 " During the whole time I
was in China," wrote Captain Gill, " I received every letter and newspaper
sent me, except one letter, and that had been forwarded vii Russia."3
1 Margary, p. 43. 2 Cooper, Pioneer, p. 432.
3 River of Golden Sand, pp. 231, 261, 270. Innovations are being tried in this matter.

342 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
The charges of the Wenchow postal companies union, quoted by Dr.
MacGowan, are as follows : from Wenchow to Ningpo, 70 cash ; to
Shanghai and Canton, 100 ; to Peking and Hangchow, 200 ; where much
of the route is by land, the charge is increased. The companies make
good all losses. Couriers with letters do forty miles a day, and the
charge for that distance is about 6d., according to Mr. Little, 1 i.e. just the
equivalent of the man's labour. M. Simon " never heard any serious com
plaint concerning the honesty and punctuality of the service," and all
European travellers give substantially the same testimony.
A missionary, writing in 1730, describes how he handed over his posses
sions to an innkeeper, who made a list and addressed them to his corre
spondent in the town to be reached. On arriving there, he found everything
already safely delivered; "the porters are very trustworthy, and if they
were not, the correspondent would be responsible for the goods consigned
to him." And Davis says of the porters engaged for Lord Amherst's
abortive mission : * Not a single article was known to be lost by the
embassies in all the distance between the northern and southern extremities
of the empire."
Gill's account of his carriers is equally satisfactory ; the goods were " very
fairly taken care of; boxes and portmanteaux were never thrown about in
the wanton manner of European porters, and during my whole stay in
China I was never robbed of the smallest thing ; " the carriers were left to
themselves, and no count made of the packages in their hands, but every
thing turned up correctly.
The facilities for travelling which struck Marco Polo as phenomenal in
the 13th century are, of course, no more than are now enjoyed in any civil
ized country, but their continued existence comes as a sort of surprise
upon tourists who have not been accustomed to think of China as civilized.
Mr. Oxenham observes of his tour from Peking to Hankow, covering 680
miles of land and 520 of water travelling : " In a journey at home I could
not have suffered less hindrance or annoyance , . . In a so-called
decrepit and declining empire, the wonderful organization and arrangement
visible everywhere was especially remarkable."2 Besides brick towers
every five li,3 " at every three li is erected a small house built of brick and
about eight feet square ; the face fronting the road is generally whitewashed,
and on this is written, in the picturesque Chinese character, the distance
from the nearest hien, both to the north and to the south, the name of the
township this particular building belongs to, and the number, name, and
residence of the thief-takers, watchmen, and police ; " at every twenty li
pails of water are provided for the travellers' mules.
Milestones and guideposts are placed at intervals along the high-roads,
and nearly every form of bridge known to European engineers finds a rude
prototype in some part or other of China. A suspension bridge on the
Yunnan road is said to have been built in the year 35 a.d. Bridges
and roads, like canals, are sometimes provided by private munificence.
1 P- 237- 2 P. 423- 3 Ii., P- 397-

COiMMERCE AND TRADE. 343
Williamson describes the " widow's hills, so called after a widow who made
the road across them at a cost of £3,000 to £4,000." 1
Hotel regulations, as already observed, are entirely modern. The key
of the room must be given to the landlord, or he is not responsible for the
visitor's property. If a stranger dies, the magistrate must be informed, and
an inventory of his goods taken ; twelve months are then allowed for rela
tives to claim them, after vvhich they revert to the Crown. These provisions
are necessary and reasonable in a land where men take long journeys, and
communications between distant parts are regular but slow. The names
and addresses of visitors are kept and reported monthly to the authorities,
but as far as appears, merely in the interest of their own and the public
safety, not with any view to police supervision or espionage. Foreigners
of any nationality who understand and take account of the customs of
the country can live or travel in China with the same perfect freedom from
restraint as her own well-behaved citizens.
1 fourneys in North China, p. 281.

CHAPTER XXIX.
THE LAW OF MARRIAGE AND INHERITANCE.
The Chinese code now in force contains, according to its editors, a few
ancient statutes derived from the Han Code, but is mainly founded upon
the statutes of the Tang Dynasty. It consists of two parts — the Lu or
general laws, vvhich are never altered, and the Li, compared to the English
statute law, which are modified and revised from time to time. In 1746
(early in the Kien-lung reign) it was resolved that the code should be
revised every five years, and new editions are still issued from time to
time. A critical account of the statutes of the different dynasties by a
competent Chinese scholar would be extremely valuable, though it might,
like the Tsing Code itself, be somewhat disappointing to the student of
Chinese custom. This code, in fact, contains only that part of Chinese
customary law which the Government is concerned to enforce, and that part
which individuals appeal to the Government to enforce against persons
breaking it to their detriment
Custom is peremptory on a good many points as to which the law is
silent, and it is probable that some usages, which have no sanction but
tradition, may be as ancient as those recorded in the oldest Lu. There are
no lawyers in China, and no legal experts, except the law secretaries who
search out precedents and draw up cases submitted to the Peking Court of
Appeal, nor are any means provided for instructing magistrates in the law
they have to administer. The Penal code is a part of the official literature
of the country, and as such no doubt is studied by the official class ; but
the Common Law of the land, including those parts which have had
penalties associated by statute with their breach, is still living, and the
fact, noted by a well-informed writer,1 that all Chinese are fairly well
acquainted with both the customary and the statute law, is owing to the
fidelity with which the laws reflect the common usage, not to the assiduity
with vvhich the common people study the written law.
The Lu have been translated by Sir George Staunton and portions of
the Li by Mr. Jamieson in the China Review. The former alone are kept
rigorously in the shape demanded by a penal code, while the latter take
sometimes the form of comments, explaining the various possible combina
tions of conduct which the law does not propose to punish. When the Li
deal with foreign or financial affairs, they correspond to the acts passed at
1 E. H. Parker, China Review, viii. p. 70.
344

THE LAW OF MARRIAGE AND INHERITANCE. 345
the instance of the administrative power ; but when they treat of private
relations, with which normally the Government has nothing to do, they are
plainly an abridged kind of case law, determining points vvhich have been
raised by litigants and decided by magistrates in accordance with equity
or notorious, unwritten custom. If a case was raised again and again in
different places, the number of decisions given on it would supply a reason
for an addition to the Li, to prevent litigation ; and this account of the
matter would explain the absence from the code of provisions respecting
points of usage too familiar and too firmly established for any one to
challenge their obligatoriness.
The law of succession and inheritance occupies only three short chapters
in the code, which will help to illustrate the above remarks. The first Lu
is headed, " Appointing a Successor to the family," and begins : " Whoever
appoints his son successor to the family contrary to law shall be punished
with eighty blows." It is not stated, but we are able to infer, that the lawful
course is to appoint the eldest son of the principal wife. If this wife is
over fifty, the eldest son by a concubine must be appointed, and the
wrongful nomination in any case is cancelled as well as punished. The
second clause assigns the penalty of one hundred blows if a lawfully
appointed son deserts his adoptive parent. The condition of lawful
adoption is that the adoptive parents have no son, and the natural parents
at least two.
The law explains that if the adoptive parents have a son later, and the
natural parents lose their other sons, the adopted son may be restored to
his natural parents, but it omits to say what is lawful if only one and not
both of these changes occur.1 The third clause fixes the penalty of sixty
blows for "confounding families and kindred " by adopting a child of a
different surname. The fourth clause makes an exception to this rule in
favour of a foundling child under three ; such a child may be brought up
and receive the name of its adoptive parents, but must not claim the suc
cession, even failing natural born children. It is also penal to " break
through the order of seniors and juniors in the generations of the family"
in appointing a successor ; while, according to the sixth and last clause,
" any one rearing up a free child as a slave, shall be punished with one
hundred blows, and the child shall be restored to freedom." This clause
has no apparent connection with the choice of a successor, and is probably
ancient ; it may have been aimed against usurpations by senior agnates
interested in the disappearance of an infant heir.
The first of the // in this chapter explains the nature of the order which
the fifth clause of the lu forbids men to break ; and the lu being older than
the li, the customary law of the subject must have been generally under
stood in remoter times, though the extension of the empire or other causes
may have made it seem expedient to state the rule more explicitly. The
1 Unless reclaimed by his natural parents, the adoptive son shares the inheritance with
his brothers by adoption. In the other case no doubt a second adoption would be
arranged.

346 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
theory of it is quite plain. The use of a successor is to take the place of
a son ; the ideal successor is therefore a brother's son, who is almost the
same as a man's own ; uncles are quasi-fathers, every brother is an alter ego,
and every nephew a quasi-son. A man's father cannot worship his tablet
or perform the ancestral ceremonies, and the uncle or any other relative
standing above him in the genealogical tree is in the same position.
It is equally impossible for a man to be represented in this matter by a
grandson. A spare grandson may be adopted as successor to a childless
son, but no one belonging to the generation of grandchildren can be put
in the place of a child, which would place him in the relation of an uncle
to his own brothers. The rule is so far artificial that when a successor
came to be sought in a remote collateral branch, it might well happen that
the person most suitable in age would turn out to be of the wrong genera
tion for adoption. While the relationship continued near, popular opinion
would be strong on the side of the lu ; when it was remote, the feeling
that prompted the law would be less spontaneously strong, and the motives
for irregular nominations being present, quarrels and controversies might
arise, and therefore the li formulated the strict law.
There is a popular maxim describing the rule of succession amongst
brothers which probably represents the sort of material out of which both
lu and li were formed. It runs : " If the eldest has no son, the eldest son
of the second brother (succeeds) : if a younger has no son, the second
son of the elder " (does so). But, as already observed, the adoption of a
son or the appointment of a successor is a matter to be decided by the
whole family in council, and any grounds for diverging from the strict line
of seniority vvhich appeared sufficient to the council would ipso facto be
good at law. The li on this chapter consist in great part of a statement of
exceptions to, as well as expositions of, the rule. If a lawfully appointed
successor cannot " harmonise with his adoptive parents," he may be super
seded by " some worthy individual for whom they have an affection "
belonging to the proper generation, and " the kindred cannot insist on
their choosing the next in order." Aversion and dislike between the legal
successor and the adopting parents, like the failure to harmonise after
adoption, entitles the childless family to seek another heir, and it is ex
pressly declared that "any attempt at compulsion or coercion, in order to
secure property on the part of the kindred, resulting in law suits, will be
punished by the authorities and the original choice confirmed."
The preceding clause is of a similar character, and under cover of it, it
is plain that any really undesirable heir could be excluded. " As quarrels
about the succession often result in loss of life, any one who, grasping after
the property, plots to succeed, and all his aiders and abettors shall be
debarred from the succession, and it shall rest with the elders of the family
to nominate the successor." It would be interesting to know the date at
which this clause was added to the code, as we hear nothing at the present
day of loss of life in quarrels about inheritance ; and it probably goes back
to the Chinese Middle Ages, when, as in the corresponding European

THE LAW OF MARRLAGE AND INHERITANCE. 347
period, possession was nine points of the law and was to be got by the
taking. The second clause in the li declares that a widow left without a son, and
not remarrying, is entitled to her husband's share in the family property ;
if she marries again, the property reverts to the husband's family, the elders
of which are entitled in any case to appoint the proper relative as successor
to the deceased. There is nothing in the lu about the rights of wives and
mothers, and the li do not mention the case of a mother with sons : these,
therefore, are regulated by custom of such force and fixity as to be practi
cally never called in question. As the most singular features of Egyptian
marriage law continued in force under the dominion of the Romans,
there is nothing improbable in the corresponding customs of the Chinese
having remained substantially unchanged from the days of the first three
dynasties. But the best account of the Chinese customs is due to a writer quite
unbiassed by reminiscences of the Egyptian mater familias, who finds " the
prominent position of the mother " in Chinese law a paradox only to be
accounted for by the custom of ancestral worship.1 According to Mr.
Jamieson, if the widow is also the mother of the family (i.e. if she was the
principal wife), " she has the practical control of the whole inheritance,"
which cannot be divided among the sons without her consent. If she is
the widow of a son dying before division, when it is effected, " she is
entitled to the custody and management of her husband's share, in trust
for her sons or the adopted successor. In this particular, custom is all
powerful. On the death of a father, the legal estate, so to speak, vests in
the sons ; but equity, in the shape of custom, prevents their dealing with it
without the sanction of the mother. So long as the family estate was
undivided, the sons would be tenants in common, and would all be bound
to join in a transfer of any portion ; but, even then, to give validity to the
transaction, the mother must also be a party."
That is to say, for all practical purposes, when the father of a family
dies, the mother and eldest son take his place, under a general trust for
the benefit of the community, which does not preclude a discretionary
freedom of action. The difference between this state of things and that
to which Egyptian deeds bear witness, is slight so far as the practical
interests of the survivors are concerned. The authority of both parents
counts for more than in Egypt, and that of the wife for far less, perhaps
because, in modern China at any rate, the son is held to derive his right
from the father, not the mother. But there are few or no modern codes so
favourable to women as to make the wife sole heir to her husband's
property and trustee for all his children, including adult and married
sons. There are two lu dealing with the division of family property, the penal
clauses of which only come into operation on the initiative of the family
elders. Sons and grandsons are not allowed to set up separate establish-
1 China Review, viii. p. 202.

34S OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
ments, and register them as such, nor to divide the family property, under
a penalty of one hundred blows, but the parents or grandparents must be the
complainants. Children dividing the property during the legal term of
mourning for parents may be punished with eighty blows, on the complaint
of the nearest senior relative, unless they are acting in accordance with the
parents' last will. Juniors appropriating any part of the family property
without leave, and seniors dividing it unfairly, are liable to punishment up
to one hundred blows, in proportion to the pecuniary amount of the wrong.
The term rendered seniors in this clause is explained to mean " the
father or grandfather class " and " the elder brother class." It is doubtful,
Mr. Jamieson adds, " if this includes the ' mother class.' If it does, she
might be said to have a joint legal estate with her sons, but at any rate
public opinion is so strong on this point that a son who attempted to sell
the patrimony against the will of his mother would be so scouted by
Chinese society that most probably no purchaser would venture to take a
transfer at his hands. I do not suppose that a case was ever heard of in
which it was tried." 1
The Chinese theory of inheritance and descent ignores altogether the
claims of women except in the character of wife and mother. Women
only inherit in the very last resort, failing all male relatives, so that heir
esses are almost unknown, though so common at Rome, in spite of the
same preference for agnates. But it may be doubted whether this fact is
owing to any disregard for the proprietary interests or distrust of the
proprietary capacities of women.
In modern China, when family properties are divided, they are divided
equally among the sons, giving to each a small capital, which is supposed,
with his own exertions, to be sufficient for the maintenance of a family.2
If the father has not already married all his daughters, the mother or elder
brother does so, and a reserve is made for this purpose by agreement at
the time of division. The wife does not therefore enter her new family
empty handed, and the plenishing or paraphernalia which she takes with
her is said on the average to be worth about half as much as a son's share.3
Marriages being universal, are necessarily arranged so as not to impoverish
the parents of the young couple ; but for the same reason, it is impossible
to look on them as an occasion for enriching the husband's family.
The desire for sons takes precedence of the desire for wealth, and
therefore fathers able to pick and choose for their sons would avoid the
families which had but one daughter left to represent them ; and, besides,
as wealth in China is more often earned than inherited, a rich father with
1 China Review, I.e.
2 The Welsh laws retain some traces of affinity to the Irish and Basque, and there it is
said : "According to the men of Gwynedd," a woman is not to have patrimony, because
two rights are not to centre in the same person. .She is not to be given in marriage
except where her sons may obtain patrimony, and if married with her family's consent to
a stranger, her sonsareto have " maternity ; " in other words children are to have a claim
on family property through one parent, — if not the father, then the mother, — but not
through both, otherwise properties run together in the way deprecated by Basque law.
3 Cf. ante, vol. i. p. 478.

THE LAW OF MARRIAGE AND INHERITANCE. 349
daughters to marry thinks it prudent to consider the personal qualities,
rather than the expected inheritance, of candidates for their hands. Who
knows, it is said, but what the youth who seems to be poor now may grow
rich, but one of bad character is certain to become poor if he is not
so already. For the same reason, very early betrothals are not recom
mended, as they must be prompted by family considerations rather than
personal fitness, and the grandfather of a prime minister is quoted as
saying that the marriages in his family were always happy x because it
was the custom only to betroth the young people a few months before
marriage, when full-grown, so that their suitability in character could be
considered. As marrying for money is practically unknown, women do not lose in
power or consideration from their failure to inherit. They share the for
tunes and the status of their husbands, instead of inheriting that of their
fathers, and the difference is not a disadvantage. " Like the Roman wife
. . the Chinese wife shares the honours and rank, as well as the
domicile of her husband,"2 and her participation in his official acts seems
anciently to have been as essential as it is now in the observance of
domestic ceremonial rites. All wives are in subjection to their husbands,
but this subjection is qualified by the importance attached to the marriage
relation itself and to that of parentage. The young husband's authority
over his wife is second to that of his own father and mother, whom he must
consult, for instance, before he can divorce his wife ; and the wife of the
father or grandfather, at the head of the household, exercises an authority
scarcely second to his over all the junior members of the family without
distinction of sex. Chinese literature is full of anecdotes illustrating the
authority of mothers and the wisdom with which it was exercised.
In the Odes, guests and relatives return the good wishes of their
princely host by promising him 10,000 years of life, numerous descendants,
and " a wife having the conduct of an officer." 3 Such wives are frequently
credited with the conversion of their husbands by a discreet remonstrance
to the energetic exercise of public virtue. Nor was maternal affection ex
pected to be blind. A lady who is praised by Confucius,4 mourned more
bitterly for her son than for her husband, but she stopped in the midst of
her grief to utter judgment : " Formerly when I had this son, I thought
that he would be a man of worth. I never went with him to court" (and
therefore could not judge or correct his conduct there) ; " and now that he
is dead, of all his friends, the other ministers, there is no one that has shed
tears for him, while the members of his harem all wail till they lose their
voices. This son must have committed many lapses in his observance of
the rules of propriety."
The historiographers have nothing but praise for another lady who took
1 " Never exhausting themselves in the joys of married life " is the expression used.
2 E. H. Parker, China Review, viii. p. 86.
8 C.C. ; Legge, Shi King, vol. iv. p. 478.
4 Li Ki, S.B., xxvii. p. 176.

35o OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
a strong measure to correct her son's lapses from these rules. He had
caused great discontent by arbitrary and excessive exercises of authority,
and there was danger of a revolt breaking out against him. His mother
was aware of this, and came instate one day to the Hall of Audience, made
him give up his seat to her, and then herself enumerated the offences of
which he had been guilty, and sentenced him to receive so many blows in
punishment ! The officer did not dare to dispute the judgment of his
natural superior ; but the admiring crowd interceded for his pardon, and we
are left to believe that he conducted himself with propriety in future. Such
an assertion of maternal power would hardly be possible in modern China ;
but even at the present day it may be taken as certain that no legal rights,
powers, or immunities possessed by a Chinese gentleman of the highest
rank would justify him in disregarding any reasonable command of his
mother, or indeed enable him to do so legally.
In China, therefore, as in Egypt, the legal position of the mother is
higher than in Western Europe ; and for civil purposes the wife, who is
viewed as a factor in the civic unit, the household, is exempt from all the
disabilities imposed by the civil law of Europe. " La femme Chinoise
peut remplacer le mari dans toutes les circonstances ou il fait acte de
maitre, et la loi lui reconnait le pouvoir de vendre et d'acheter, d'alie'ner
les biens en communaute, de contracter des effets de commerce, de marier
ses enfants et de leur accorder le dot qu'il lui plait de leur donner. En
un mot, elle est libre."1 This civil competence, together with the non
existence of the separate property of married women, practically proves
that the primitive Chinese custom causes every lawful wife to become, on
marriage, a partner in her husband's estate.
The wife's dowry is merged in the family property, though its money
value is not inconsiderable,2 so much so that in the event of a second
marriage, the widow has no claim to recover it. But Chinese usage does
not approve of systematically one-sided bargains, and the wife, as we have
seen, obtains, in place of the exclusive control of her personal contribution
to the joint estate, a life interest in the whole of her husband's property,
inherited and acquired. This claim is so indefeasible that it is said the
agnates sometimes bring pressure to bear upon the widow to induce her to
marry again, which she can only do respectably with their consent, as it is
essential that the bride shall be " given away " by relatives, who also make
the customary presents. Second marriages on any terms are contrary to
the best and oldest rules of propriety ; but it is no doubt well for the cause
of domestic harmony that it should be possible for the family council to
free itself decorously from the presence of a widowed mother whose cha- .
racter unfitted her for the responsibilities of the head of a family, and to
such a person a second marriage would probably not be unacceptable.
But the contrast to Hindoo usage is curiously complete.
1 Les Chinois peints par eux-mlmes, p. 61.
2 Wang-ming-tse's sisters, it may be remembered, had a portion of about ,£70, equi
valent in Europe to perhaps ^400, and forming nearly ^ of the capital value of the
family property.

THE LAW OF MARRLAGE AND INHERITANCE. 351
The first li on the division of property explains that sons who divide
and separate wrongfully do not escape punishment by failing to register
themselves as independent householders. The second defines, what had
previously been treated as notorious, the fair and lawful system of division :
" all family property, movable and immovable, must be divided equally
between all male children, whether born of the principal wife or of a con
cubine or domestic slave." That is to say, all sons born in the household
are equally legitimate, and have an equal share in the inheritance. Other
sons may be recognised, but are not equally legitimate, and are only
entitled to a half share, unless a legal successor has been appointed in
default of other children, in which case they have an equal share, while if
no such successor is appointed, they receive the whole patrimony.
Prior to division, all the family property, whether inherited or acquired
by the father or acquired by the sons, is brought into a common fund.
The children of a son dying before division do not inherit from their
father, but receive subsequently the share which would have been his. The
family community is not necessarily broken up when, as occurred in the
Wang family, one or more of the sons are engaged in trade or have ob
tained office and are therefore separately established. In such cases the
son retains command of his own earnings, and it is matter of arrangement
whether his share of the family property is advanced to him at once or not ;
if not, he would share with the others on division. There is a traditional
or popular maxim which says, " The younger brother should take the less
share of the fruit;" but recent legal decisions seem adverse to its authority.
There is a similar maxim : " The will of the father should be respected ; " 1
but wills in the technical European sense can scarcely be said to exist in
China ; what are so called is a verbal — more rarely a written — expression
of a father's wishes, which it is proper for sons to respect, but which might
be set aside for valid reasons, injustice, or change of circumstances or the
like. Another " well-worn Chinese maxim " declares that " the son pays the
father's debts;"2 but there is nothing in the code concerning this obligation,
any more than about the payment of other debts. It is thus a matter of
custom or a point of honour, — as among the Rhodians, — and we shall not
probably->go far wrong if, in both cases, we connect the reluctance to re
pudiate with the existence of customs unfavourable to the accumulation
of a great burden of indebtedness, as to which the moral seems less than
the legal obligation. In other words, Chinese sons pay their father's debts
because such debts, as a rule, represent value received, and are not out of
proportion to the family means, while the family credit is a part of the
inheritance worth paying for.
A few cases, showing the disputes that arise in practice, will perhaps
help to explain the working of the laws, which are too simple to encourage
much litigation. A father of four children, by two wives, left forty-seven
1 China Review, v. p. 194, " The law of inheritance." C. Alabaster.
2 E. H. Parker, loc. cit., p. 93.

352 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
mow of land to the four in common. The first wife sells it secretly, for
150 taels, for the benefit of one of her own children, while one of the half-
brothers was bribed to agree. Decision : fifty taels (more than enough !)
are set aside for funeral expenses of the wife, and the residue is divided
into four parts, one for each child, while the two conspiring half-brothers
are punished.
A man with no sons and one married daughter marries a second wife,
and at the same time (to make sure) adopts a nephew. He then dies,
leaving the second wife and a posthumous son : the first wife encourages
her son-in-law to enter on the property, and exclude the adopted and post
humous sons, producing a will (prior to the adoption and birth) in the
son-in-law's favour. But as the land is barely sufficient to support the
two sons, the will is set aside, and the heads of the family instructed to
draw up a deed settling the property on the two sons ; "and, if there be
any litigation, we will see," says the judge, "what the penal law will do! "
In another case, where brothers dispute about their respective shares
under the father's will, both parties are advised " to remember that further
litigation will only lead to the utter waste of the family property, and
their reduction from wealth to poverty."
Another case involving the rights of sons-in-law is that of a man who,
having no male heir, gave a daughter, by a concubine, to a husband in his
o7cn house, and it was claimed that this wing of the house was given to his
daughter as dower, though the couple did not reside there after the
marriage. On the man's death, the son-in-law claims to inherit ; but the
court decides that he must await the birth of a posthumous child, who, if
son, will take all, and if daughter, will halve with his wife. In another
case, a man dies and his father-in-law makes away with his son's inherit
ance ; the father-in-law is flogged for "disregarding the dead and injuring
the living," and his property is applied to recover as much of the infant's
estate as is not wholly alienated. One brother has a right to prevent
another, whose heir he is, from alienating property, which, if not alienated,
would form part of the inheritance.
A less common type of dispute relates to the question whether an en
tailed family estate was left for the benefit of the family in general or for
that of students in preference. The estate was sold, and that is ruled to
be wrong any way, as the sacrifices were a first charge on it, and the
vendor is flogged accordingly. Similarly, the Chen family had seventy
mow of land dedicated to the maintenance of its ancestral worship and
administered by different branches in turn. An elderly reprobate tried
privately to appropriate twenty mow, and was excused punishment on
account of his age ; but the alienation was forbidden. Property, lawfully
bought by one party, is not forfeited because the vendor had a bad title, if
the purchaser had no means of knowing the fact, and the real owner made
no protest at the time. In general, the Chinese courts seem to go upon
the principle of assuming that deceased fathers will have wished to have
the right and reasonable thing done, and that any living relative who does

THE LAW OF MARRIAGE AND INHERITANCE. 353
not entertain the same desire should be turned over to the tender mercies
of the penal code.
The code is far more copious on the subject of marriage than on any
other civil contract. The penalties for offences against women are severe,
and that of death is not commuted unless the family of the victim consent.
There are seven lawful causes of divorce,1 besides infidelity, condonation
of vvhich is itself punishable. But there are three reasons which override
the seven, and make the wife's position unassailable ; namely, if she has
shared the three years' mourning for her husband's parents ; if the family
has become rich after being poor before and at the time of marriage ; and
if the wife has no parents living to receive her back again. It is unlawful
to pretend that a wife is a sister, and give her in marriage to another man ;
but while there is little impediment to divorce by mutual consent, the law
does all it can to protect the wife against repudiation without cause, when
the dissolution of the marriage would be plainly injurious to her.
It is not conceivable that a man should wish to divorce the mother of
his sons (the example of Confucius notwithstanding), and for practical
purposes the Chinese law of divorce only affects women who would not be
considered wives at all by European law. Men are required to provide for
the marriage of their female slaves ; the families of slaves are never sepa
rated, and a master who was known to have taken liberties with the wife
of a slave would be irretrievably ruined.2 In fact, " marriage is regarded
as something indispensable," 3 and the aim and object of legislation is to
produce a nation of married fathers. The effect of this principle upon the
moral, physical, and economic well-being of a people is illustrated also in
the experience of the Jews.
The numerous restrictions on marriage, over and above that against
marrying into the same surname, are all directed either against the marriage
of blood relations, or against that sort of confusion of relationships which
arises when persons, normally dwelling together in a relation resembling
that of affinity, are considered to be marriageable if there is no tie of
blood. The Chinese, with all their extreme regard for natural relation
ships, yet do not assign any magical influence to the ties of blood, but
consider that for practical purposes those who live together as father and
1 Viz. . barrenness, lasciviousness, disregard of her husband's parents, talkativeness,
thievish propensities, envious and suspicious temper, and inveterate infirmity. (Staunton,
Penal Laws of China, p. 120.)
2 Lettres Ldifianies, xix. p. 146.
" Mr. Parker adds a comment to this remark : " Possibly one explanation of the
light-heartedness and cheerfulness observable amongst all ranks and classes of Chinese is
the provision thus wisely made by the popular consensus for the early and honourable
satisfaction of what Bentham calls one of the few ' imperious wants of mankind ; ' " and
he suggests that the "order and serenity of mind," for which the Chinese are so much
more distinguished than European nations, may be due to the same cause. " To marry
men is to keep them quiet." (China Review, viii. pp. 73, 77.) The result noted by
modern European observers was deliberately aimed at by ancient native legislators.
The third of the twelve "general instructions" which the Director of the Multitudes is
required to propagate throughout the Empire, formulates Mr. Parker's conclusion : " By
the rites of the female principle (Yin), conjugal love is tauglit, then the J>eople do not
complain." (Biot, i. p. 196.)
VOL. II. — P.C. A A

354 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
son, or father and daughter, should reproduce all that is essential to the
relationship, and accept the disqualifications it entails. It is clearly on
this ground that a man may not marry the daughter of a wife's former
husband, because she could only have been properly received into his
household on the footing of a daughter. Such a marriage as that with the
half-sister (on the mother's side) of a wife, are not only forbidden, but are
regarded as incestuous ; so is a marriage with any female relation, or the
widow of any blood relation, within the fourth degree. Death is the
penalty for marrying a grandfather's, father's, or brother's widow, or a
father's sister.
The following marriages are also penal and invalid : — with a father or
mother's sister-in-law (or aunt by marriage) ; with a father's or mother's
aunt's daughter (or second cousin through a female) ; with the sister of
either son or daughter-in-law (i.e. father and son must not marry two sisters,
nor father and daughter sister and brother) ; and with a grandson's wife's
sister. The law against marrying any one of the same family name of
course excludes the corresponding relations, such as second cousins, on
the paternal side ; but while the rule about the surname might have grown
into a superstition, adhered to without any regard for its rational origin,
the fact that relationship through females, which in so many other aspects
is ignored, should be still treated as a bar to marriage, for as many degrees
as it is likely to be remembered, seems to show that the Chinese regard
the "confounding of families " as an evil to be resisted at every point.
But it is so unusual for exogamous superstition to be associated with
rational prohibitions against the intermarriage of relations not affected by
the rule, that we must either credit the Chinese with a very exceptional
delicacy of feeling on the subject of domestic relations, or account for
their strictness as a reminiscence from the time when relationship through
women was the most important ; and the latter hypothesis is confirmed
by the copious vocabulary distinguishing relationships through women
previously quoted.
The men of China are perfectly satisfied with the morality and propriety
of family life as constituted in the Middle Kingdom. They say, and no
doubt with truth, that virtuous and tender wives and mothers have all the in
fluence that they desire within the household enclosure ; and they contrast,
to their own advantage, the material security and protection extended to
women in China, with the precarious lot of those engaged in the struggle
for existence on their own account in Western countries.1 And as a State
has never yet been seen in which the men and the women are of an entirely
different and opposite mind, it is probable that the majority of Chinese
1 La Cite Franfaise par le lettre Fan-ta-gen, public1 par G. Eugene Simon (1890), is
an attempt to reproduce the impressions European society may be expected to make on
a Chinese scholar. The same thing has been done with more wit and vivacity under the
name of Tcheng-ki-tong. But on one point, no doubt, M. Simon is literally exact.
Fan-ta-gen is moved to horror, amazement, and tears by the sight of an old woman and
her granddaughter begging in the street. There are beggars in China, and sturdy ones
too ; but apparently even beggars take their earnings home and find them sufficient for
the decent maintenance of their old women and young girls.

THE LAW OF MARRIAGE AND INHERITANCE. 355
women desire for themselves the best fortunes appropriate to their actual
lot, rather than a lot of a totally different kind. The exceptions to the
general rule of contentment are to be found among the younger women,
who are the victims of Chinese society. If any members of the family
group are sacrificed to the pleasure or caprice of others, it is the daughter-
in-law or the inferior wife, or both.
The mother-in-law may bully her son's lawful wife, and the latter in her
turn may oppress his other spouses. The national good temper may be a
security against very serious abuses, still abuses do exist, and that in
sufficient number to cause anti-matrimonial secret societies to be formed
amongst girls, the members of which are sometimes pledged to prefer
suicide to a bridegroom. And as it is not natural for women to be less
contented than men with the married state, there must be something much
amiss in the domestic habits that can provoke such a reaction. The
education of the mass of Chinese women is neglected, and the powers
assigned to the Chinese materfamilias are greater than can be safely en
trusted to a person whose mind, like her feet, has been confined within
artificially narrow limits.
That the abuses in question are not more general is owing, no doubt,
to the educational effect of the powers and responsibilities above de
scribed ; and it is probable that the girls' suicide clubs would come to an
end, if every woman, whose sons are regarded as legitimate, were held to
possess the same personal rights as the principal wife. Without any
violent dislocation of Chinese custom, a reasonable extension of the rights
of this class would gradually encourage the preference for monogamous
unions, which are already general, and which we must be permitted to
regard as belonging to a higher civilization.
It is the rule for marriages to be arranged by the parents, but the code
permits a young man, employed at a distance from home, in trade or the
Government service, to contract a marriage for himself, and if his contract
is completed, it supersedes the one made by his family without his know
ledge ; but if not, not. A French novel of Chinese Life x turns on the
dilemma of a young doctor, who has practically married a girl without his
mother's consent, and is then entrapped by his mother into a formal mar
riage ceremony with somebody else. The offence of bigamy, contem
plated by the code, consists in marrying two first wives ; it is punished by
blows and the second marriage declared invalid. If the young man, to
whom a girl has been betrothed, dies before the marriage has been con
summated, she may if she pleases regard herself as his widow. Among
the charitable institutions of the country are asylums where poor widow
ladies and their children, and girl widows of this kind may be received.
One such "Hall of Rest for Pure Widows" is described as containing 150
women and 300 children.2 Each inmate pays an entrance fee of a few
pounds, and the current expenses are met by the subscriptions of wealthy
families. 1 Le Roman de Thommejaune. Tcheng-ki-tong.
2 China Review, x. p. 425.

CHAPTER XXX.
AGRARIAN LA WS AND CUSTOMS.
Next in importance to the family comes the neighbourhood. The
fifteenth precept in the Sacred Edict exhorts men to " Combine in Hun
dreds and Tithings in order to suppress robbery." The chia, or tithing,
consists in theory of ten families, with a mutual responsibility like that of
the ancient tsing. The pao, or hundred, also in theory includes ten chia,
but both groups are elastic. It is supposed that the members of such
groups, owing to their smallness, can exercise such an effective supervision
over each other as to make crime impossible, and that if a theft is com
mitted, this supervision must have been so culpably relaxed as to justify
the injured person in appealing to his neighbours for compensation.
Each chia and pao elects one of its members to act as headman ; the
literati are excused, and officials or police officers are disqualified from
serving in this capacity. Besides the optional measures for the good
government of the locality which the headman may take with the consent
of his constituents, he is also required to apportion and collect the taxes
for his district.
The third maxim of the Sacred Edict exhorts the people to "Cultivate
peace and concord in your neighbourhoods, in order to prevent litiga
tions ; " and the exposition of this text by the Emperor Yung-ching, and a
popular paraphrase of the same by a salt commissioner named Wang-yu-
po, abundantly illustrate the Chinese ideal of neighbourliness. Among the
things mentioned as likely to lead to angry contentions are such as these :
" One might wish to borrow from another who would not lend, or to
recover a debt the payment of which was refused ; or he would buy a
field or build a house without giving the neighbours notice and ascertain
ing that they had no objections. If people are foolish enough to begin
to quarrel over such points as these, artful schemers will go on and stir
them up to litigation." "In that case," says Mr. Wang, "you will have
to kneel before the magistrate in the public courts, to throw away large
sums of money, and to suffer much shameful treatment. If you lose your
lawsuit, you will scarcely be able to show your face in society again ; and
even if you gain it, you will find that everybody looks coldly and askance
upon you. Where is the advantage of all this ? " 1
1 Imperial Confucianism. Four Lectures by Rev. James Legge. China Review, 1877,
p. i;6.

AGRARLAN LAWS AND CUSTOMS. 357
The difference between Chinese and European ideas of morality is
curiously exemplified in these passages : to refuse payment of a lawful
debt, and to refuse to lend to a neighbour who asks it, are bracketed as
acts of similarly objectionable tendency. Even such simple exercises of
individual rights as the purchase of what is for sale should not be indulged
in without considering the wishes of persons who may be affected by them.
It would, for instance, clearly be contrary to propriety to buy a field,
which a neighbour was renting with intent to purchase, so as to enlarge
his family property. But the moral advice which follows the picture of
the evils of litigation is not addressed to the persons who commit aggres
sions on their neighbours. Ordinary persons are advised to guard against
the beginnings of strife, and to cultivate habits of consideration and
deference for others ; but the counsel of perfection is to reach such an
elevation of character as will enable them to disregard offences, and on
no account bear malice against the offender, who, " if worthy to be ac
counted a human being," will, according to Mr. Wang, " blush almost to
death " at the sight of such magnanimity.
This commentary and paraphrase on the edict of Kang-hi are publicly
read once a fortnight, and give the sanction of Imperial authority to the
popular distrust of the lawcourts ; but from the reports of Chinese trials,
given by European writers, we should have been inclined to believe that,
apart from such accessories as bribery and the bamboo, the justice dealt
by Chinese magistrates was painstaking and even-handed.
There is an article in the Code forbidding persons from taking up more
land than they can cultivate, after a war or famine, these being the only
occasions upon which uncultivated land is plentiful. Land which is not
registered, or for which the registered owner omits to pay taxes, lapses in
theory to the State, which grants it afresh to any one cultivating it and
becoming responsible for the tax ; but the Government does not press the
right, and the former owner is reinstated on application. Land in Shan
tung would only sell for a tithe of its value after a recent famine, because,
on a similar occasion once before, the purchasers had been compelled to
restore their acquisitions to the original owners.1
Waste lands may be enclosed as private property by obtaining leave
from the magistrate and actually reclaiming them within a reasonable time.
Grants, nominally of vacant lands, were made by the early Mantchu
Emperors to their followers, and these are the only lands exempt from
taxation ; but the holders render military services, and the largest grant
did not exceed 720 mow — say 125 acres — and even these consisted mainly
of barren or pasture land, so that the burden to the population was incon
siderable. Owners of 200 acres and upwards are not allowed to reclaim
alluvial wastes, and this probably explains the absence of any marked
distinction between the fortunes of landlord and tenant. The former is
not necessarily either richer or less industrious than the latter, but having
1 China Review, vol. viii. p. 263.

358 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
some other occupation to live by, which prevents his cultivating his free
hold, he sells the very slight difference which there is between the
customary earnings of a tenant farmer and a taxpaying owner.1 The
owner's motive for letting is that he can occupy himself more profitably
than as a cultivator, and the tenant's protection against rack-renting is that
he also could at any time employ himself more profitably than as a tenant,
except upon the customary terms, which include the remission of rent
in bad seasons.
Apparently the peculiar Malabar combination of lease and mortgage has
been tried in China, though the absence of any feudal authority on the
part of landlords has caused it to fall into disuse. It is stated that when
an owner lets land, he is careful to exact " a pledge equivalent to or even
exceeding the income of the property he leases."2 The reason given (by
a missionary complaining of persecution), that otherwise the tenant would
refuse to pay the rent agreed on, is hardly adequate, because even in
China a man could not make his fortune in one year, even out of a farm
held rent-free. There can be little doubt that the advanced rent answers
to the Malabar Kanam, and that if mortgage leases have become rare, it
is because tenant-farming itself has declined, in the absence of any class
distinction between owners and cultivators.
Land is sometimes let because it cannot be sold. Land belonging to
family endowments or charitable uses of any kind is inalienable, and, if
wrongfully sold, will be reclaimed and the purchase money returned.
Land devoted to public purposes, mountains belonging to the State, roads,
sea-walls, embankments, official temples, famous sites, and ancient buildings
or monuments cannot be sold. In theory the holdings of private families
— or at least a part of them — are also inalienable ; relatives not only have
a right of pre-emption and redemption, but are required to consent to the
sale. An edict of the 18th year of Kien-lung provides that the words
"absolute sale without power of redemption" must be used in every deed
of sale intended to be absolute ; and as it was added that land conveyed
more than thirty years before the edict was to be irredeemable, it is
evident that the right of relatives to redeem was asserted frequently and
after unduly long intervals. In modern deeds of sale, the vendor pro
fesses to have offered the land first to his relations ; and the next of kin,
as far as cousins, have a right to insist on his doing so. It is a formula
that the owner desires to sell " on account of poverty ; " and that this is
really the usual motive appears from the fact that advertisements of such
sales are not posted on the walls, out of regard for the reduced owner's
feelings. It is unlawful to sell land to a creditor in discharge of a debt, though
it may be sold to a disinterested party in order to obtain money to pay

1 Amyot observed last century that " those who cultivate the lands belonging to
others retain more for themselves than in other countries. " (Mem. cone, les Chin iv
P-318.) 2 Annates de la Propagation de la Foi, vii. p. 642.

AGRARIAN LAWS AND CUSTOMS.

359

various debts. And this very singular provision l is perhaps the strongest
example of the unscrupulous consistency, with which Chinese legislation
aims at protecting the cultivator, from the dangers to which his class in all
ages and countries seems to have been especially exposed. Widows can
not sell land without their father-in-law's consent, if he is alive, nor alienate
their sons' inheritance, though they have discretionary powers to buy and
sell for the good of the family ; in practice no doubt they would not
propose to sell land without the consent of the family council.
All contracts are entered into subject to local usage, and Europeans
who omit to acquaint themselves therewith are sometimes much di.-gusted
at its unexpected divergences from British law. Thus the man who buys
a piece of ground does not thereby become possessed of the buildings
which a tenant has erected on them, and if he wishes to pull them down
and build himself, he must buy ihem from their lawful owner by a separate
transaction ; and in fact, when Europeans buy land, as they think, out
right, the native vendor himself compensates the owners of the houses
on it.
Deeds going back for fifty years are desirable to give a secure title, and
these should be compared with the counterparts kept in the Government
Registration Office. As in ancient Egypt, a fee is charged for the
registration of sales or transrers, but in return the public archives serve as
title-deeds ; and while England vainly envies Australia the advantages of
the Torrens Act, China has long since adopted this simple means of con
trolling claims which frequently go back for several centuries. Go-betweens,
who are employed in most important purchases, are essential in the case
of land transfer. They must be, at least, two in number, and their function
is partly that of official witnesses, as they are required to give evidence in
court if any dispute arises about the transaction in which they were con
cerned.2 Hill sites for tombs were the subject of much litigation, and the anti
quarian learning of the law courts has sometimes been tried by really
ancient deeds, which prove, however, to belong to a later dynasty than the
seals attached to them. It was therefore decided by Kien-lung that in
such cases, whatever adverse ancient documents might be produced, the
holder of the land-tax receipts, whose name appears on the register, is to
be regarded as lawful owner. Otherwise any representative of an old
decayed family, which had preserved its ancient records, might oust
occupiers who had fulfilled all the duties of ownership for centuries.
The so-called patrimonial field, which every Chinaman is supposed to
possess, and forbidden to alienate, is most probably a survival from, or
reminiscence of, the " duty fields '' by which, in less prosperous times
than the present, the State endeavoured to make sure of all its citizens
having wherewithal to pay their taxes. This institution tried to link itself
on to the ancient tradition of communal tillage and the inalienable pro-
1 Met with, it will be remembered, in the Syro- Roman Law-book, ante, vol. i. p. 491.
2 Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, vii. p. 658.

o

60 OWNERSHIP IN CHIXA.

perty of the tsing; but the connection in both cases is probably rather
imaginary than real, familiar terms being applied under such altered
circumstances that they had acquired a virtually new meaning. Only
comparatively wealthy families at the present day can afford to set apart
as much as eight mow, which M. Simon gives as the limit of the inalien
able patrimonial field, for the maintenance of the ancestral rites and for
use as a family cemetery. On the other hand, the same area, when
belonging jointly to a large branch family or clan, can have no agricultural
value, and is only available as an ancestral hall and for other public
purposes, including that of a burial-ground. Such buildings are used as
country or summer houses by well-to-do townspeople, just as Buddhist
temples on picturesque sites serve as popular tea gardens.
The first Emperors of the reigning dynasty were particularly eloquent
on the duty of officers to protect the poorer cultivators. An edict
describing the duties of a mandarin, as the guardian of the people, says
that if a cultivator has not seed or oxen for the cultivation of his land, he
should advance him the money or grain, and be content to receive repay
ment after harvest without interest. A good officer will even go about the
country incognito ; and when a labourer is obliged to set his children to
draw the plough, because a rich usurer has sold his oxen for debt, he
rectifies the injustice.1
The land tax, like the rent, is remitted if the year's crops are lost by
drought, inundation, or similar calamities. In such cases the local
government is allowed to make advances for seed, repayable in not less
than ten years. Cultivators behind-hand with their taxes may also borrow
from the local treasury on the security of their land, p tying interest on
the loan till the debt is paid off; but there are amnesties every ten years
ot oftener, so that the interest at least is generally excused. Besides the
grain loans, which have the great advantage of preventing one bad
harvest from causing another, and the grants made in aid of special
calamities, there are permanent local funds for the assistance of the sick,
the old, widows and orphans, sufficient in the hands of an honest official
to meet all urgent needs.
No doubt, as Amyot observed on this subject in the age of Kien-lung,
the actual does not come up to the ideal. "The laws command the best
to obtain the bearable." But it is true, in fact as well as theory, that any
social tendency or abuse, in public or private circles, which threatens any
section of the community with destruction, is pulled up short, on that
ground alone, without any respect for the iron laws of political economy
as formulated in the West. "Nos mceurs," as the naturalized Amyot
observed, " ne souffrent pas qu'on ruine un citoyen pour augmenter l'opu-
lence d'un autre."
In the same way, the State intervenes to prevent individuals from grow
ing rich out of the calamities of the public. Farmers are forbidden by law
to hold back their grain, and though the State might find as much difficulty
1 Leltres Edifiantes, xix. p. 132.

AGRARIAN LAWS AND CUSTOMS. 361

y

in China as elsewhere in enforcing such a law, the matter is not left to
the feeble hands of the central authority. " In times of great scarcity
and high prices, several contiguous neighbourhoods forbid rich farmers or
speculators in rice to sell their grain away to a distance, and agree to seize
any which they find being carried off in spite of the prohibition. In this
case, the holders either have to wait till the restriction is removed or sell to
their neighbours." '
Local Government is a reality in China, and the local feeling, which in
England under the Corn Laws, showed itself in rick-burning, has here a
constitutional and peaceful means of giving effect to its resolves. Trade is
of course not free, but there can be no serious doubt that the villagers
collectively pay just so much less for their rice as the profit, of which
their tyranny has deprived the individual speculator. To the Chinese
mind the wisdom and justice of such a course scarcely needs exposition.
Benevolence is the duty of all men; near relatives and neighbours are its
appointed objects. Can a benevolent person desire to acquire gain by
selling rice at a distance, when his near neighbours suffer hunger for want
of it ? Assuredly not ; but persons deficient in benevolence require to be
restrained in the interest of their neighbours, and instructed for the good of
their own souls. If the grain dealer who fails in benevolence is only re
strained, without being chastised, his treatment is at once just and merciful,
and the whole transaction is in accordance with the strictest rules of
propriety. It is the duty of the pao chang, or headman of the hundred, to see that
every head of a household complies with the law requiring him to register
the individual members of his family, and the class to which the family
belongs. The latter requirement is embodied in the Lu,2 which are un
usually full on the subject of registration ; and considering the searching
nature of the demands made, the efficiency with which the law is carried
out, with regard both to persons and lands, is certainly remarkable. The
system is evidently so old and so firmly established as to work without
difficulty, and compliance with the law is rendered expedient by divers
incidental provisions. For instance, the number of the candidates who can
be admitted to each degree, in any one province, is always strictly limited ;
but scholars are only allowed to compete in the district where they are re
gistered, otherwise one province might seize more than its share of vacancies ;
so that it is essential to the chances of any candidate that his father should
have registered his name correctly.
1 Social Life of the Chinese, by the Rev. J. Doolittle, xi. p. 252. Private granaries
exist in some places, founded by philanthropists who endowed them with funds sufficient
to keep them replenished, as those of the State are supposed to be, so that they are always
in a position to lend corn— like the Babylonian temples— either free of charge or al a
moderate interest, the profits from which would go to the institution. (Annates de la Foi,
vii. pp. 644, 645.)
2 C. 76. "Every family, on being originally reported for registration, shall be re
gistered as belonging to some definite class, whether it be the military or common civilian
class or that of Government couriers, artificers, physicians, soothsayers, laboureis,
Strolling players, etc., etc." (China Review, viii. p. 269.)

362 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
It is the duty of the provincial officers, if the people have left their homes
on account of war or famine, to draw up a list of those who have disap
peared, and of the arable land left vacant in consequence, stating the amount
of land tax payable thereon, and also what taxpayers still remain in the
district. The list of fugitives is to be circulated throughout the country,
and the officers where they have taken refuge are called on to issue orders
for their return. Those who had prospered abroad might decline to do so,
but the indigent would be compelled. Land is habitually described, and
marked on boundary stones, as belonging to such and such a family, not
to an individual ; and any member, however poor, of a family that had
owned the deserted lands would find his claim allowed without difficulty
on giving proof of kinship, if he alone came forward to accept the respon
sibilities of ownership.
This is one more of the many ways in which the circulation of property
is facilitated in China, instead of its being encouraged or forced to stagnate
in the same hands, or that of an ever-diminishing body of heirs. Each
family has a kind of customary code of its own ; 1 and all its property is
registered with reference to the objects to which it is devoted : — such a
plot supplies pensions for the old, such another prizes for scholars, or
daughters' trousseaux, etc.2 This applies only to the wealthier families, but
it is so common for land to be left for the maintenance of ancestral
worship, which covers all these beneficial uses, that such endowments
may be held by any respectable family which has once had a wealthy
member. The law on the subject of mortgages is curious ;3 the only transaction of
the kind recognised is the very ancient one previously described * as
common to Egypt, Babylonia, Malabar, and other centres of archaic
civilization. The four unlawful acts contemplated in connection with
such transfers of the usufruct of land against that of money are-
omission to register the mortgage ; failure on the part of the mortgagor
to transfer the whole produce of the land, for which the mortgagee pays
the Government taxes, the penalty being graduated according to the
number of www illegally mortgaged, and the land itself forfeited to the State;
attempts to raise money by a second mortgage on property which has been
pledged already ; and refusal to give up the land pledged at the end of
the term specified in the deed, if the proprietor then or afterwards tenders
payment of the amount borrowed when the mortgage was executed.
The li on this section add some of the details given by Amyot,5 explain
ing that clauses of redemption cannot be admitted in the case of deeds of
sale, though the presumption is against an absolute surrender, unless
expressly so stated ; and providing that the owner's right to redeem may
remain in abeyance sine die, unless he accepts some further consideration
for making the sale absolute. But it is laid down that, failing any reser-
1 Cf. Yang-chi's reference to the custom of his family with regard to teachers.
2 Les Chinois peints par aix-mhnes, p. 5. 3 Staunton, cap. xcv. p. 101.
* Ante, vol. i. pp. 184-7 ; 322-7 ; 436, 7 ; 462 ; 534 ; 569 ff. 5 Seea«.V, vol. i. pp. 184, 5.

AGRARIAN LAWS AND CUSTOMS. 363
vation by deed of the right to redeem, possession for thirty years shall be
a proof of ownership.
It will be noticed that the Code not only requires to have the change
of ownership notified and registered, but insists upon the transfer being
complete, so that the mortgagee shall be in no way less able than the
owner to discharge his liabilities to the State ; and the same distrust of
divided ownership shows itself in another section, which forbids one person
from paying the taxes due to the Government by another. On the face of
it, this looks like a provision against farming the revenue, and the penalty
is increased two degrees if the vicarious payment is made by an officer of
the Government ; but viewed in the light of history, which records the
attempts of the agglomerators of the Tsin and subsequent dynasties to
reconstitute feudal lordships for themselves, it seems more probable that it
was first suggested as a precaution against encroachments by wealthy
persons, who, under the plea of paying the cultivator's taxes for him, would
induce him to incur far heavier liabilities than those of which they relieved
him. The only motive that can be imagined for a mortgagor to pledge his
land, when he was in a position to dictate terms to the mortgagee, and
induce him to surrender all or a part of the produce of the lands nominally
ceded in full temporary use, would be the desire to evade the laws against
agglomeration, and it is only in such circumstances that the State would be
interested in preventing the bargain. When the landowner is really in
want of money, the mortgagee is master of the situation, and would
certainly not be disposed to surrender his claim to the produce of the land
pledged. But when underletting is rare and rack-renting unknown, it
would be more of an innovation to let land at an unheard-of rent, than to
compel a poor man, who wanted land for cultivation, to advance money
nominally on mortgage, but really as a consideration for leave to cultivate,
while agreeing to take less than the whole produce of the land occupied
on these terms. The law does not seem to touch any abuse now prevalent,
and must therefore have been suggested by grievances which have become
obsolete. The li respecting Chinese trading with or settling among barbarians are
interesting, historically, as well as in themselves, because they illustrate the
principles upon which the Hundred Families have relied, from their
first entry upon the corn-bearing plains of Northern China until now. The
trade in iron is free, except on the borders of the Miao-tsze, the inland
barbarous tribes, to whom it must not be sold, lest they should use it for
weapons. The manufacture of saltpetre, again, is forbidden under severe
penalties in Formosa. Barbarians, who are no longer dangerous, are not
to be made unnecessarily troublesome, by being allowed to procure superior
weapons from the ruling race. On the other hand, certain classes of
persons are recognised as dangerous to the peace and well-being of bar
barous lands, and all such are liable to be deported to their native places,
even if they escape further punishment.

364 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
" Wandering tramps, who have no wife and home," constitute such aclass,
and so do " notorious fomentois of lawsuits, though they may have a wife
and land ; " likewise thieves, receivers, and the makers and sellers of
gambling instruments, and dealers in opium, together with " unprincipled
Chinese who enter the savage territory and create disturbances by plotting
to acquire land owned by savages,1 or who conspire with other lawless
persons to induce emigrants to cross over illegally." 2 These provisions
refer specially to Formosa, where also, " Chinese subjects, who cut off
their queues and adopt the manners of savages, thus casting off their
allegiance, shall be liable to the penalty of death." Besides which, persons
who allow their hair to grow loose, change their habits, and marry savage
women, shall be liable to banishment to the frontier for military service ;
while simple banishment for three years is awarded the offence for marry
ing a savage woman, without adopting savage modes of life.
For four thousand years the Chinese have been absorbing barbarous
tribes, and annexing barbarous territories for cultivation after Chinese
methods, and the process has been aided rather than impeded by the
above laws against individual encroachments and aggressions on the one
hand, and against any sort of fraternization with unreclaimed barbarians
on the other. When the Chinese were few, and the barbarians many,
the ancestors of the Chow kings, according to Mencius, tried to keep the
peace by letting the barbarians buy (no doubt upon their own terms) furs
and silks, dogs and horses, pearls and jade,3 from their civilized neigh
bours. The barbarians would have Chinese precedent for regarding such
trade as tribute, and when even these concessions failed to content them,
it was a characteristic Chinese measure to move on out of the way of the
troublesome Teih, rather than fight the matter out with them.
Experience proved that barbarians who were allowed to profit as much
as they themselves pleased by the vicinity of Chinese civilization, while
protected by the Chinese Government from any injury at the hand of its
subjects, were certain, sooner or later, after the lapse of a sufficient number
of centuries, to contract a taste for Chinese civilization, and to wish to be
absorbed in the empire. And the expansion of China has proceeded
partly by the peaceable annexation of people and territory together after
the former had adopted Chinese manners and customs, and partly by the
reclamation of unoccupied territories, by colonies organized in the same
manner as the village clans at home. The assimilation of the people in
almost all cases precedes the annexation of the territory, and, as a result,
the land laws and customs concerning land-holding in the Middle Kingdom
have not been altered or influenced by the creation of a lower class, drawn
from an inferior race.
1 It is impossible not to ask whether the history of the British Empire would no t
supply pleasanter reading if some such clause as this had found place among its statutes.
- China Review, viii. p. 9.
3 Life and Works, p. 156.

CHAPTER XXXI.
FINANCIAL AND MERCANTILE OFFENCES.
The code is copious as to the duty of officials in regard to the receipt,
transfer, and expenditure of the public revenue. A curiously primitive
article provides that taxpayers delivering their contributions in kind may
be allowed to measure their own grain, and the officer or collector shall
be beaten who "refuses to receive fair measure from the contributing
landholder, or insists on shaking the grain into as small compass as possible,
or piles the grain into a heap,"1 even though the overplus is duly appro
priated to the service of the Government ; while a double penalty is exacted
if the excess is embezzled. This unique anxiety on the part of the State,
lest it should derive too much profit from its subjects, inspires a clause in
the chapter dealing with the receipt and issue of public stores.2
"If the superintending officer, purchasing or hiring goods for the public
service, does not pay the stipulated sum immediately, or stipulates for
more or less than the market price or rate of hire of the goods in each
case, the amount of the excess above, or the deficiency below, what was
fairly due, shall be estimated, and the offending party shall be proportion
ately liable to punishment according to the law applicable to the cases of
pecuniary malversation in general;"3 and he shall moreover replace to
Government, or to the individual sufferer, whatever may have been im
properly withheld. The same penalty applies to officers who " receive
goods of an inferior quality, when they ought to have been of superior
quality." In England, when military stores prove scandalously unfit, the question,
"Whom shall we hang? " is cheerfully debated in the newspapers, with an
underlying conviction that at the top of the official scale, where we take
the existence of probity for granted, responsibility will be so subdivided
that no honourable gentleman need be saddled with more than a bearable
fraction of blame ; while at the bottom of the commercial scale, it is a case
of caveat emptor, and the contractor has a right to cheat the Government
if he can ; so that nobody need be hung (or even bambooed) after all.
We look down on the dishonesty of Chinese officials, and think it dis
creditable to the nation that there should be so many laws against that
offence, yet no one hesitates to use as an argument, against the extension
1 Staunton, v. 127. 2 lb., p. 139-
3 The penalties under this section range from twenty blows to one hundred blows, and
three years' banishment. 3«s

366 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
of Government intervention in any direction, that work done for the State
is always more costly than the same work done for private persons— a fact
which admits of only tvvo explanations : either that the Government is a
more liberal paymaster than private persons, or that it is habitually cheated.
The latter hypothesis must be preferred, however reluctantly, since It was,
until recently, supposed to be the duty of Government officials to buy goods
and labour, not at a fair and uniform market price, but at the lowest rate
possible, which, in China, is as unlawful as passing paper boots or pewter
bayonets would be. And our economists would regard as a truly bar
barous idea the suggestion that the Surveyor of Ordnance, or a Director
of military clothing, should make good out of his own pocket the difference
between the earnings of operatives employed on Government contract work,
and the minimum sanctioned by the corresponding trade union scale. The
lowest tender may be too high for economy, or too low for equity ; but our
officials are not sufficiently well informed as to the market price of all kinds
of commodities and labour to be able to judge what the State on each
occasion ought to pay, under penalty of making good the excess or defect
if they decide wrongly.
In China, on the other hand, it is comparatively easy, even for a
scholar, to know what prices are customary; while as to the quality of goods,
even Emperors themselves have not disdained to discriminate between
good rice and bad. The price of labour does not vary from one season
to another ; the wages of labourers are not reduced because a bad harvest
may have left some cultivators without other resource than their power of
working, and so have glutted the labour market ; efforts are made to find
or make work, but it would be a crime, not a charity, to offer it at less
than the normal rate ; hence the rate of wages only varies slowly and
slightly in the course of half-centuries, as that of the precious metals may
do. The prices of commodities have the same stability, and as the
customary prices are adjusted to the customary quality, any alteration in
the latter has the effect of fraud, and is proscribed by law accordingly.
It is this real uniformity of practice which enables the Government to
regulate official expenditure, through a somewhat venal bureaucracy, more
effectively than is done in England with a higher standard of honesty in
the official class.
The last brief division of the Code contains the laws relating to public
works ; in this, officers are forbidden to undertake any public works with
out previously receiving full reports (concerning costs and requirements)
from their subordinates, and obtaining authority from their superiors to
proceed with the undertaking. If they begin to employ labourers, etc.,
without such authority, they will be punished as for pecuniary malversation,
the amount of which will be estimated by counting the number of labourers
employed, and the number of days they have been at work, pricing each
man's day's work at (nearly) jd. 1 An exception is made in the case of
1 In the case of lawfully employed labour, not more than fifty men from a district may
be employed at a time, and no one may be detained more than three days.

FINANCIAL AND MERCANTILE OFFENCES. 367
urgent necessary reparations; but in the regular course of things, the officer
must describe the works which he desires to execute, and estimate their
cost ; while if he " does not truly state the extent of the labour and quantity
of the materials required, he shall be punished with fifty blows," and any loss
arising from his miscalculation shall be laid to his charge, rendering him
further liable to a penalty for pecuniary malversation up to the amount
incurred. Expenditure upon " unnecessary or unserviceable work " is
punishable under the same law, the maximum penalty in each case being
one hundred blows or three years' banishment. Articles manufactured for
the public service must not be contrary to the established rule or custom,
under a penalty of forty blows; and if "the deviation is so considerable
as to render the manufactured articles totally unserviceable, or to render
it necessary to employ additional labour and expense in adapting them for
use, the said labour and expense shall be estimated, and the responsible
person punished in proportion to the amount, according to the law re
specting pecuniary malversation in ordinary cases."
Excessive expenditure, even on harmless or praiseworthy public objects,
is thought objectionable, and an author quoted by Amyot observes : "The
splendour and wealth of the State is not shown by the magnificence of
dykes and sluices, of bridges, canals and public buildings, but by the
portliness of the citizens, and the number of children and old people."
Large and showy transactions afford a margin for peculation, because
the details are less easily controlled, and if China has no public debt, this
may be partly owing to the fact that no enterprising war contractors or
ambitious aediles have been suffered to build fortunes out of the supply of
her wants. All economical problems are more complicated in Europe
than China, but we cannot claim complete superiority for the more
complicated machinery, till it has been brought to the same compara
tive degree of perfection as the older and simpler system to which we
prefer it
The general law against adulteration is headed " Manufactures not
equal or comformable to the standard," and is the last of five sections
dealing with " Sales and markets." According to it, " If a private indi
vidual manufactures any article for sale, which is not as strong, durable, and
genuine as it is professed to be, or if he prepares and sells any silks or
other stuffs of a thinner or lighter texture and quality, narrower or shorter
than the established or customary standard, he shall be punished with
fifty blows."
A "piece of silk" is a known quantity; it has been used when coin
was scarce as a medium of exchange, and it is treated as a fixed quantity
in the sumptuary law or custom, which limits the number of pieces of silk
given as a marriage present to ten on the one hand, and two on the other.
There has been no reason, since the days of Chow, why respectable trades
men should desire to have any alteration made in the dimensions of the
web of silk turned out by all the looms of the Flowery Land, 1 and isolated
1 The primitive dimensions of the web were forty feet by two feet two inches.

368 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
divergence from the general usage for the purpose of entrapping customers
into paying a higher price for an article of unfamiliar size, seemed only
slightly less objectionable to the lawgiver than the use of false weights,
measures and scales prohibited in the preceding article.
Another section in the same book, concerning " Monopolizers and
unfair traders," is worth quoting at length to illustrate the doctrines in
restraint of trade, which have always been and still are upheld by the
supreme authority in China. " When the parties to the purchase and sale
of goods do not amicably agree respecting the terms, if one of them mono
polizing, or otherwise using undue influence in the market, obliges tht
other to allow him an exorbitant profit ; or if artful speculators in trade,
by entering into a private understanding with the commercial agent, and
by employing other unwarrantable contrivances, raise the price of their
own goods, although of low value, and depress the prices of those of others,
although of high value— in all such cases the offending parties shall be
punished with eighty blows for their misconduct. When a trader, observing
the nature of the commercial business carrying on by his neighbour, con
trives to suit or manage the disposal or appreciation of his own goods in
such a manner as to derange or excite distrust against the proceedings of
the other, and thereby draws unfairly a greater proportion of profit to
himself than usual, he shall be punished with forty blows. The exorbitant
profit derived from any one of the foregoing unlawful practices, shall, as
far as it exceeds a fair proportion, be esteemed a theft, and the offender
punished accordingly, whenever the amount renders the punishment pro
vided by law against theft more severe than that hereby established and
provided. The offender, however, shall not be branded as in ordinary
cases of theft."1 It is in pursuance of this idea, that exceptional profits
must be virtually stolen, that the State, which would be horrified at the
proposal to treat the common people as taillable et corveable a merci, has
no scruple in treating its capitalists as squeezable at discretion.
The " commercial agent " referred to in the above law is not exactly a
Government official, though he is licensed and appointed by Government.
They are elected from among the wealthier inhabitants of the sea and river
ports where ships and merchandize are liable to arrive, and it is their duty
to keep a register of such ships and cargoes, and of the " marks, numbers,
quality and quantity of the goods imported or introduced into the market."
These registers are submitted monthly to the district officer, who takes
what action thereon may be necessary; but the principal function of these
agents, as laid down in the code, was " the valuation and appraisement of
goods and merchandize, after due consideration upon fair and equitable
terms," partly with a view to the assessment of the customs duty, but
partly also as a survival from the regulations in force when private traders
were only allowed to dispose of their wares to, or through, agents of the
Government. Penalties against the Government agent were enforced if
they misrepresented the value of the goods imported, for their own advan-
1 Staunton, p. 165.

FINANCIAL AND MERCANTILE OFFENCES. 369
tage, or took bribes for under-estimating the State dues; while any one
threatening to extort fines or forfeitures unjustly, for the sake of obtaining
blackmail, became liable to the punishment prescribed for officers of
Government who commit wilful injustice in pronouncing judicial sentence.
The treaties with European powers which modify or abolish the func
tions of these officers, are of such comparatively recent date, that the
provisions of the code are still more in keeping with the national habits
and ideas than the modern system of fixed duties paid to the Imperial
Treasury.1 Of course the services of these agents were not rendered
gratuitously, though they received no regular salary from the Government ;
but in each district there would be a well-known and authorized scale of
fees or commission, which they were entitled to demand along with the
Government dues, but which it was equally unlawful to exceed.
The old laws against hoarding copper are retained, in the modified form
of a prohibition against the retention in private dwellings of any utensils
wholly or chiefly of copper, except mirrors, arms, bells, and articles dedi
cated to religious purposes ; but any copper possessed in excess may be
sold to the Government at the rate of about \\d. a lb., or such other price
" as the state of the markets and circumstances may authorize." The fact
that the estimate has not been raised, though copper now commonly
fetches about twice the amount named, would by itself prove that the
present dynasty does not attach much importance to the enactment which
it allows to remain on the Statute Book.
The code throughout treats the duties of officials as matter of notoriety,
and in providing against official misconduct, there is, if anything, more
anxiety to protect the people than the Government against any evil con
sequence that might result from official misconduct. The legislature
evidently looks upon corruption and tyranny, or a compound of the two,
as the sin which does most easily beset the employees of the State, and all
the obvious occasions and manifestations of such tyranny are expressly
defined and provided against. Officials are not allowed to buy land, to
marry wives, or to lend money within the area of their jurisdiction,2 and
the punishment attached to a simple breach of the rule is increased if
force or terrorism has been employed to compel the other party to sell,
borrow, or give a wife against his will.
The main provisions of the law against usury have already been described.
Any one demanding or receiving interest in excess of the original amount of
the principal is liable to punishment, according to the amount extorted, up
to one hundred blows, and if the offender is a Government officer, sentence
of banishment in perpetuity may be added to the blows. The debtor, on the
other hand, who fails to repay principal and interest at the date agreed on,
may be punished at the rate of ten blows for every month's delay, up to a
1 The cause of the unpopularity of foreign trade with Chinese district officers is that,
under the old system of restricted trade, the customs were received by the local
authority, and contributed to the revenue of the district, whereas they now go to
Peking. 2 Cf. ante, vol. i. p. 491.
VOL. II. — P.c. B B

"1 -1

370 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
maximum of sixty blows. But should the creditor be dissatisfied with this
mild, vindictive sentence, and attempt to right his own wrong by forcibly
seizing the cattle, furniture, or other property of the debtor, he becomes
liable to a penalty of eighty blows (redeemable, however, by fine), or if
the distress exceeds the value of the debt, to such further punishment,
proportioned to the amount of the excess, as the law regarding pecuniary
malversation provides. Further, if the creditor accepts the wives or children
of the debtor in pledge for payment, he receives one hundred blows ; and
if he carries off such members of the debtor's family by force, the penalty
is two degrees more severe, and the debt is cancelled. The repayment of
a loan is the only kind of pecuniary liability which the Government attempts
to enforce ; and when the reluctance of the Chinese to appear in a police
court even in the character of plaintiff is borne in mind, it will be seen that,
even in this case, creditors are not likely to benefit much in practice by
the protection which the law accords them.
There is nothing in the Lu about the contemporary custom of collecting
debts by the New Year ; the absence of anything like a bankruptcy law and
the predominance of small transactions must have contributed to make
cash payments the rule ; and where this is the case, and the systematic
giving of credit is unknown, a custom would easily grow up of allowing
accidental delays of payment to be overlooked if cash were forthcoming
within the twelvemonth. The New Year is a holiday time, and the very
poorest indulge in some kind of festivities. Nothing but the most abject
poverty can prevent a Chinese family from having some provision for
enjoyment made at this time of year ; and as nothing but absolute inability
can excuse the non-payment of debts to neighbours at that season, the
Chinaman must either pay his debts or go without festivities under pain of
passing for a swindler. Hence the most frantic efforts are made to borrow
money, or goods which may be pawned for money, to pay whatever is left
of the year's debts, though after the sun has risen on New Year's Day,
there is no obligation to discharge them, and no allusion is permitted to be
made to them by the creditor.

CHAPTER XXXII.
MISCELLANEOUS LAWS; ADMINISTRATION AND SOCIAL
INSTITUTIONS.
Most of the directions to judges, contained in the code, as to circum
stances to be considered in mitigation of sentences, and the judicial
principles expressed or implied in the prescribed modes of estimating
responsibility, are such as would approve themselves to humane and en
lightened lawyers. The meaning and purpose of the statutes is always
clear, and the precision with which they are drafted is sufficient for the
purpose they have to serve. The magistrates are required to give equitable
judgments, and decisions in accordance with the spirit and letter of the
code ; and as there are no professional lawyers, authorized to sustain in
equitable claims by a strict interpretation of the letter of isolated clauses,
it is unnecessary to multiply explanatory provisos, which themselves mul
tiply the possibilities of dispute.
By a counterpart to the English law of " Maintenance," it is illegal even
for non-professional persons to assist or advise in the suits of others, and
a penalty is imposed in the case of those who receive money or any other
inducement for doing so. The only exception is that made in the case of
a poor and ignorant person, who does not know how to state his case
properly before the tribunals ; any one who " advises and instructs such
person rightly and truly how to act," or "draws up an information for him
in the legal and customary manner " without misrepresenting the facts of
the case, is exempt from blame or punishment1
The code aims at obtaining a confession of the justice of the sentence in
all serious cases before it is executed. If a prisoner sentenced to banish- -
ment or death refuses to admit his guilt, the protest " shall be made the
ground of another and more particular investigation," 2 and the magistrate
who refuses to receive such a protest is punished. The innocent can thus
secure a second hearing, while the guilty are not likely to risk an aggrava
tion of their sentence by a vexatious appeal. In several cases the li or
statutes of the present dynasty mitigate the penalties laid down by the older
law, while the blows imposed as punishment for all minor offences can be
compounded for a small fine. Women are only allowed to be imprisoned
upon capital charges, and remain otherwise in the custody of their rela
tives, and nearly all their offences are redeemable by fine.
1 Ta Tsing lu li, sect. 341. 2 lb., sect. 416.

372 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
One or two entirely civilized and humane provisions are, by a curious
arrangement of the code, hidden away, under the head of miscellaneous
offences, in the division devoted to criminal laws. It is melancholy to
think of what art and science have lost in Egypt, which might all have
been saved if the monuments of that country had been under the protec
tion of the enlightened Chinese code, by which " Any person who is guilty
of defacing or destroying any of the public monuments and buildings, which
have been erected in honour and commemoration of particular individuals
and events ; and any person who defaces or destroys the inscribed tablets
upon, or within the same, shall be punished with ioo blows and perpetual
banishment to the distance of 3,000 li ; the offender in these cases shall be
moreover compelled to repair the damage " J — a provision which the cha
racter of Chinese monuments renders less impossible than such atonement
would be elsewhere. Even now, if one destructive tourist in Egypt were
allowed to " eat stick " for his sins, the work of demolition might be arrested.
The next clause carries us back to the days of Chow,2 and is only placed
among offences because a penalty is attached to disregard of it. By this
private soldiers attached to Government stations, and labourers employed in
public works are entitled in illness and infirmity to receive medical assistance
and treatment free from the local medical officer. It will be remembered
that a system of Government dispensaries was introduced by the Mongols,
and though it has unfortunately fallen into disuse, it is worthy of note that
the Government feels itself responsible for the labourers temporarily em
ployed in its service, as well as for the regular civil and military employees
of the State. And as the liberality of the Government does not go beyond
what is considered incumbent upon private employers, we may infer that it
is usual for the latter also to give such assistance when necessary to their
workpeople. The section concerning public ways provides briefly for the maintenance
and repair of roads, bridges, and embankments by the local authorities, and
includes a law against encroachments, which shows how long China has
been both a crowded country, and one with sound ideas of sanitation and
decorum. "Any person who encroaches upon the spaces allotted to pub
lic streets, squares, highways, or passages of any kind, — that is to say, who
appropriates a part of any such space to his own use, by cultivating it or
building on it,— shall be punished with sixty blows, and obliged to level and
restore the ground to its original state. Any person who opens a passage
through the wall of his house to carry off filth or ordure into the streets or
highways, shall be punished with forty blows ; but in the case of a passage
being opened to carry off water only, no penalty or punishment shall be
inflicted." China has no drains, but the demand for refuse of all kinds for
use as manure causes the streets to be efficiently scavenged by private
enterprise, and the immunity of the people from epidemics is no doubt
largely due to the absence both of open drains and of sewer gas.
Not the least curious or characteristic feature in the code is the juxta-
1 Ta Tsing lu li, cap. ccclxxvi. p. 411. » Ante, p. 224 and n.

MISCELLANEOUS LAWS. 373
position of passages like the above, vvhich suggest quite modern problems,
and others which carry us back to the Shoo-King itself and to the most pri
mitive arrangements for the care of the royal cattle. In the fourth book
of the Hia Dynasty, the composition of which is attributed to that of Shang,
the " statutes of government" are referred to as ordaining that if the State
astronomers "anticipate the time " or fall behind it, they are to be put
to death without mercy. From that day. to this, no doubt the laws of the
Middle Kingdom have always contained an article upon " Neglect to ob
serve and note the celestial appearances," 1 such as eclipses, meteors, comets,
and the like, and the astronomical board is still required to " mark the
times " of these phenomena and re'port them to the emperor, though the
penalty for neglect has been reduced, with the progress of humanity, from
"death without mercy" to sixty blows.
The section concerning responsibility for the care of Government cattle
has been referred to already.2 One division of the code is devoted to
what are called military laws, and one book in this division deals with mili
tary horses and cattle. " Every officer in charge of the rearing and feeding
of the horses, horned cattle, camels, mules, asses, and sheep beilonging to
the government shall be responsible for an hundred head of animals ; (i.e.
the punishments are on the scale of such a charge of 100) and a strict and
faithful report shall be made to government of the death, loss or partial
injury which occurs to any of them," 3 that those in charge may be pun
ished unless proved not to be responsible for the damage. Under whatever
circumstances the animal dies, the skin, tail and the bullock's tendons and
horns shall be given to the proper officer. Rearers and feeders are "excused
punishment " if it is shown that the death was from old age, but they have
to make good loss or injury from other causes, and " the dead or maimed
cattle shall be sold towards replacing the same with living and perfect
animals." To "conceal the increase" is among the offences contemplated :
a special regulation respecting the droves of brood mares requires that their
keepers shall produce not less than 100 foals a year from three droves of
100 mares each. In the purchase of animals by contract for Government
use, the officers are required under penalties to estimate every animal truly
and justly ; and failure to do so, whether to the detriment of the Govern
ment, or that of the vendor, are punished alike, as in the case of other
Government purchases. Neglect of the animals, whereby they become
lean, or bad management in harnessing or driving them, whereby sore
backs or galled shoulders are produced, are punished, the degree of guilt
being measured by the size of the sore or the number of unduly lean
beasts. As the Chinese in general, like the Egyptians, are kind to their domestic
animals, it seems likely that this law is prompted by genuine humanity, as
well as by the desire to have the stock kept in good condition. The owner
of dangerous animals is required to tie them up and mark them as such ;
1 Sect, clxxvii. p. 187. 2 Ante, p. 52; and vol. i. p. 135. 8 Sect, ccxxvii.

374 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
dogs are to be destroyed if they go mad. The curiously severe law against
killing horses or cattle without a Government license is perhaps derived
from a time when the Government attached some importance to the right
of requisitioning such animals from private owners; and as China has never
been a grazing country, the tendency of the people was always to diminish
this available reserve. At present the law serves practically only as a tax
upon butchers, with an incidental tendency to enable the magistrates to
regulate and equalize the price of meat.
There is no game preserving in China; any one is free to hunt wherever
he can find birds or beasts, and this being so, the fact that game is not ex
terminated confirms what has been said already as to the general abund
ance of food. Tcheng-ki-tong gives the following list of animals available
for sport : partridges, woodcock, snipe, quails, wild duck and geese ; roe
buck, red and fallow deer, hares and rabbits, besides fox, wolf, bear, pan
ther, and tiger in appropriate localities.1 As in the Chow Li, there are
provisions in the code2 against danger to passers-by from traps or springes
set by the hunters for wild animals, and they are required to put some
visible sign as a warning to mankind, though at the risk of scaring the
more cunning and intelligent beasts. It is not recorded even of Chou or
Chieh that they attempted to preserve their hunting grounds against intru
sion, by deliberately setting traps and springes to catch, not beasts, but
human beings.
The Chinese pay less than any other people for their Government, less
absolutely and less per head, and the limitation of the Imperial revenues
has the incidental advantage of keeping the number of Government officials
at a minimum also. M. Simon estimates the total number for the whole
empire at between twenty-five and thirty thousand, or perhaps one for
every nineteen thousand of the population. Capital crimes and executions
are rare, and even when allowance is made for the jurisdiction exercised by
family and local tribunals, the proportion of the population who suffer any
kind of restraint at the hands of authority is extraordinarily small. The
extent to which the Government is constitutional and responsible has been
indicated in the history of previous dynasties. Local droughts, inunda
tions, or other national calamities serve, as well as any patent dereliction
of duty, as a pretext for revising ihe personnel oi the administration ; but if
the officer of the unfortunate district is popular, the people appeal on his
behalf, and he is continued in office with a note in his favour rather than
the reverse.
If, on the contrary, an official makes himself intolerable to those under
his jurisdiction, and is proof against all remonstrance, the townspeople shut
up their shops, the country folk refuse their taxes, or, in M. Simon's
words, " Plus d'affaires, rien ne va. Au bout de trois jours, si l'accord ne
s'est pas retabli, destitue ! C'est commode et cela se passe sans bruit."
Archdeacon Gray tells an amusing story illustrative of this sort of local
strike against unpopular government. In 1880 there was a struggle be-
1 Les Flaisirs en Chine, pp. 12, 3. 2 Sect, ccxcliii.

MISCELLANEOUS LAWS. 375
tween a mandarin and the pork butchers of a provincial town respecting
the imposition of an additional tax on each pig killed. The pork butchers
closed their shops and persuaded the public neither to buy nor sell. Four
official stalls were opened by the military for the sale of meat ; but the
public sympathised with the strike, and it was allowed to rot without
finding purchasers, and finally the tax was abandoned and the pork
butchers gained the day. The governor of a town is superseded if the
fires in it exceed a given average,1 and officers are expressly declared to be
responsible for the mortality in prisons if it rises beyond specified limits.
Exhortations and admonitions are plentiful, and as in the days of Yao
and Shun, the emperors still make " announcements" to the people about
their own and their ministers' lapses from perfect virtue. If a local officer
finds or introduces in his province a commendable usage, he sends a de
scription of it to the minister of Rites at Peking : the minister submits it to
the consideration of the Han-lin College, and if this learned and indepen
dent body approves of it, it is communicated to other provinces : if it is
generally adopted by them, it passes into the coder but does not become
law till the next reign, so that usages do not acquire statutatory powers till
they have had ample time to become familiar.2 In the locality that wishes
for a law, it can take effect at once. Any official of the rank of Tao tai
or Intendant of circuit is competent, by and with the advice of the local
guilds, to publish regulations, says one writer, "as fair extending in their
character as the Trustee Act or the Statute of Frauds ;"3 but such regu
lations, like other laws, are never promulgated by authority till they have
begun to be observed by general consent
All official Chinese documents have a curiously conversational tone. An
edict about grasshoppers, for instance, explains paternally how they can be
caught and their eggs destroyed, that they are good for food, can be dried
and given to ducks, pigs, and other domestic animals, not omitting the
reassuring fact that their taste is like dried prawns.4 At dangerous parts
of the road notices to travellers are stuck up : " Do not shelter here
because of the floods," or " Beware of the mountain water," as in England
cyclists' clubs warn the fraternity against dangerously steep descents.
Official decrees in China combine in one text the letter of the law and
such an exposition of its admirable motives and tendency as would be
supplied in England by an " inspired " morning paper— a combination
which ceases to appear singular when we remember that the Government
is carried on by the very class whence able editors are drawn in Europe.
In civil disputes, if the sentence of the local popular courts of arbitration
is not accepted, the case is brought before the magistrate, and his under
lings may have to be bribed to allow the "petition " for justice to reach
him. Further appeals may be made to the provincial treasurer, to the
governor of the province, to the officer of corresponding dignity in the
adjoining province, and from him to the Emperor ; and bribery which has
1 Gray's China, pp. 51, 13. 8 La Cite Chinoise, p. 150.
2 The Cycle, p. 328. * Middle Kingdom, vol. i. p. 469.

376 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
been successful at every previous stage has been known to fail at this final
appeal. Few civil cases, however, are reported in the Gazette as being .
carried up to the higher courts, the parties presumably thinking it wise to
acquiesce, when they are simply referred back to the judge, who has
already heard and decided the case.
Besides the traditional drum which claimants for justice are still in
theory entitled to strike,1 there are six tablets, with appropriate inscriptions,
affixed outside the local courts of justice, indicating where redress is to be
sought by those wronged (i) by wicked officers, (2) by thieves, (3) by false
accusations, (4) by swindlers, or (5) in any other way, the 6th being for
those who have secret information to impart. The courts of justice are
open from dawn till dusk — the day's work of labourers and of officers being
of equal duration.
Witnesses, as is well known, are examined under torture, if there is
reasonable ground to suspect that they know more than they tell, and of
course this practice leads to grave abuses. No counsel are employed, and
the judge is expected to divine the truth from the physiognomy and re
crimination of witnesses, and such signs as in the West would be followed
up by detectives on behalf of either the prosecution or defence. " The
chief security the people have against an unmitigated oppression, such
as exists in Turkey . . . lies as much as anywhere in the general
intelligence of the true principles on which the Government is founded, and
should be executed." 2 "The Chinese are the most law-abiding people on
the face of the globe, but the laws by which they will abide must be laws of
vvhich they approve." 3
The right of petition, which, comparatively lately, had to be contended
for in England, is not only freely exercised in China, but a petition, if
favourably received and printed in the Gazette, acquires at once quasi-
legislative force. Any citizen who possesses the necessary command of
language and style may memorialize the emperor, and even if the matter
of the memorial is unacceptable to the sovereign, and the tribunals take
no action upon it, it is nevertheless preserved in the Imperial Record Office,
and the historiographers of the future may be trusted to do its author
justice. Besides the right of petition, the Six Boards, in whose hands the
control of the administration rests, possess a constitutional privilege equal
in effect to the parliamentary liberties valued in the West. The emperor
refers all questions and memorials to these tribunals, for consideration and
report, if they do not, as is often the case, reach the tribunal first. The
tribunals are absolutely free to reply and report as they think best ; and,
though, in practice, if the emperor does not like their decision, and refers
the matter back to them for reconsideration, they may be disposed to tem
porize ; yet if he were so egregiously in the wrong that they felt compelled
1 Resort to the drum is regarded as an heroic remedy, but it is not ineffectual. Mr.
Pumpelly, having failed to obtain shelter anywhere in a town, struck the drum, and the
door not only flew open at once, but he was enabled to find rooms.
2 Middle Kingdom, p. 5°7- 8 Gray's China, pp. 224, 5.

MISCELLANEOUS LAWS. 377
to adhere to their first response, he would be a bold ruler who dared to
risk being written down a tyrant, by disregarding such lawful protests.
The opinion of the doctors of the Han-lin College loses none of its
weight from the fact that its members as such have no place in the Govern
ment1 They receive from the State a house and garden and a small
pecuniary allowance, but so far from being considered in consequence to
be in any measure dependent on the Government, the endowment is re
garded as theirs by inalienable right, and is further supplemented by
endowments and donations ancient and modern. The Chinese Govern
ment shows, perhaps, as much deference to the opinion of the learned, as
very enlightened and democratic European Governments show to the
opinion of the press ; and it shows as much deference to the opinion of
the people as the latter do to the verdict of the ballot boxes at a contested
election. The parallelism between the double organs of the national will in
different continents is far from complete ; but if the essence of a constitu
tion is to restrain the arbitrary power of the sovereign, China has every
title to rank as a constitutional monarchy. No important empire would
suffer less visible or material change if the form of government were
suddenly metamorphosed into a federal republic. And it may even be
doubted whether the two great constituent powers just referred to, the
learned and the people, would have any serious objection to the change,
if an heir of the reigning house were entrusted with the discharge of the
customary ceremonies in the' worship of Heaven and Earth and of his
Imperial ancestors.
That the people have, in fact, inherited the duties and prerogatives of the
ancient emperors is apparent from all accounts of the benevolent institu
tions of the country. Foundling hospitals, asylums for the aged poor and
other permanent establishments for the relief of distress are only partially
supported by Government funds, and depend largely on private donations
and endowments. The present dynasty has especially encouraged the
foundation of orphanages and homes for the reception of foundlings, so
that it is possible that the reproach of infanticide brought against the
Chinese may have been formerly more deserved than now.
There are charitable as well as provident burial societies,2 which provide
coffins for the destitute, and poor parents are said sometimes to lay their
dead children by the roadside, in hopes of having them interred by these
societies, more decorously than they themselves could afford. The ac
counts of infanticide in China are derived in great part from the reports
of the French Societe de la Sainte Enfance, which begs for subscriptions in
France to save the souls and bodies of Chinese babies. The society
employs native mission women, who are paid so much a head for every
1 Very young doctors are employed in the public examinations, but do not hold office
till qualified by age and experience.
2 Subscriptions to these so-called " Long life loan companies " are continued for six
teen years unless the member die sooner, in which case he gets the coffin and grave-
clothes provided by the Society cheap.

37§ OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
baby they baptize ; and as veracity is not the strong point of the Chinese,
laymen permit themselves to doubt whether all the babies reported as
christened in articulo mortis were really found alive.
The Catholic orphanages find it extremely difficult to obtain the charge
of any children at all, which is not surprising when we learn that the
mortality is much higher in them than in similar, native institutions ; this
fact is easily explained, since the Chinese do not allow a nurse to take
charge of more than one infant, while the missionaries give three or four
to the same. When the poor little things die, the Chinese institutions
bury them in coffins, an expense which the missionaries regretfully declare
themselves unable to afford. When the children in the Chinese orphan
ages grow up, the boys are taught trades, and the girls frequently adopted
by childless families, or taken as inferior wives ; records and descriptions
are kept, so that the parents can at any time reclaim or trace their children
if they wish to do so ; and, as in the land of Sumer and Akkad, the found
ling might have his " filiation " formally and legally proclaimed.
The massacre of the French at Tien-tsin was caused by the refusal of
the Sainte Enfance to follow the same custom. The inundations of the
Yellow River in 1870 had caused so much distress that a considerable
number of children had, by way of exception, been entrusted to the
society.1 As their families recovered from the calamity they wished to
reclaim their children ; but the missionaries refused to restore their
baptized protege's to heathendom at the peril of their immortal souls.
Family affection and the continuity of family relations is the corner
stone — and half the edifice — of the really national religion of China, so
that the outbreak in which the foreigners suffered cannot be treated as
unprovoked. English law would certainly have upheld the parents'
claim, and a writ of Habeas Corpus have been issued against the
missionaries had the matter been one within the jurisdiction of an
English court2
Besides permanent institutions, it is the rule for wealthy clans to give
doles in spring and autumn to poor members, out of the endowments
of the ancestral altars, a liberality which may be regarded as the con
sequence of there being no priesthood to maintain in connection with
the orthodox rites. The Buddhist list of crimes and virtues has acquired
a substantially Chinese character ; and among the latter we find included
the giving to the poor of hot tea in winter and cold in summer— a
provision which has been compared to the establishment of drinking
fountains in England— as well as the bridging rivulets and paving high
ways. In one cold December, a Chinese lady was reported to have
given five hundred jackets to the old and poor of Canton. In 1832 a
college was erected by private subscription, at a cost of ,£10,000, on a
1 La Citi Chinoise, p. 1 79.
• The Chinese riots correspond to those of which a London mob might be capable, if
a ' foreign Jew or " Papist " were defendant in cases like those in which Dr. Barnardo
has been concerned.

MISCELLANEOUS LAWS. 379
site given by a widow lady, to provide " fat and fire," i.e. oil and food
for study gratuitously to scholars. But the number of public charities
founded by private persons is reduced by the same cause which
diminishes the necessity for them, namely the number of family endow
ments bequeathed to supply the wants of poor members of important
clans, as well as by the liberality towards relations exercised by the well-
to-do members of every family.
This trait is well illustrated by Dr. Legge's account of a great fire in
Victoria, Hong-Kong, some forty years ago. It broke out one winter
evening, and hundreds, if not thousands, were rendered homeless. He
took a few of the sufferers to his home for the night, and started early
next morning to raise subscriptions among the English and other
merchants. " I took my way by the scene of the conflagration. There
were the streets lined with the ruins of the burnt houses, but of all the
crowds whom I had left at midnight shivering on the hillside there was
no trace ; what had become of them ? The answer to my inquiries was :
'Their kindred have taken them in. Does not the second maxim of
the Sacred Edict say, Behave with generosity to the branches of your
kindred in order to illustrate harmony and benignity ? ' " The constant
application of this principle to individual cases as they arise saves the
empire from the formation of a dangerous class, — the residuum, which in
our Western cities drags out a miserable existence on the borderland
between pauperism and crime, and which in the Middle Kingdom
takes to brigandage, whenever " harmony and benignity " begin to fail.
Life and fire insurance offices do not exist in China apart from foreign
influence ; l yet in an effective and informal manner the whole empire
is a vast insurance society, so that cities and provinces as well as
individuals are enabled to recover from disaster with a promptitude and
completeness scarcely to be paralleled out of the United States. Lockhart
describes the restoration of Shanghai, after its destruction by the Triad
Society,2 and the way in which, as soon as the people could return, re
building began, the streets were cleared, boundaries of property marked
out by owners, shops opened, and trade resumed ; so that " in a very few-
months whole streets had been built, and the business of the city
flourished as before. . . . Money was lent in large sums to the
traders and shopkeepers by wealthy men ; and it is truly a testimony to
the integrity of the Chinese character that when people had been utterly
ruined, as most of these tradespeople were, others would come forward
and cordially enable them to reinstate their business. For these advances
large interest was paid, and the principle liquidated by degrees as trade
prospered." 1 Intelligent Chinamen to whom their working is explained doubt whether they would
not prove a dangerous incentive to murder and arson, for the sake of securing the
promised premiums. The Mongol princes who receive grants from the Emperor for
marriage and funeral expenses are said to be exceptionally "wasteful of their wives," as
infant mortality is increased in England by high premiums from burial societies.
2 The Medical Missionary in China, p. 332.

3S0 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
After destructive storms, the native gentry put up sheds in temple
grounds, and pay doctors to attend there upon the injured; and such
specially British forms of philanthropy as total abstinence societies (to put
down drinking and opium smoking) 1 find a counterpart in China. There
are societies for the relief of poor widows, and for assisting men to get
married. Free libraries, as we have already seen, are numerous, and there
is actually a building at Canton called the Free Discussion Hall, where
political matters are debated with the knowledge of the Government,
which finds it more advantageous to ascertain and influence public
opinion than to suppress its utterances.2 It is said, however, that the
expression of public opinion by the essays of candidates in the Govern
ment examinations is now restricted, and that political questions in which
the affairs of the present dynasty are concerned may not be alluded to by
examiners or candidates — a corruption of ancient usage which conserva
tive scholars would have the sympathy of the West in rectifying.
The examinations, it has been observed, form, as it were, the avenue to
the " hustings, the Church, the Bar, and the learned professions all at
once," 3 and their character is thus a valuable indication of the quality of
the education received by the competitors. The merits of the merely
literary exercises are of course unappreciable by foreigners, who will be
tempted to share the emperor Yung-ching's distaste for "sonnets to the
moon and clouds, the winds and dews," which serve no practical purpose
and do not help to " regulate the age and reflect glory on the nation."
But the following questions,4 quoted from the " History Paper," set in an
examination for the second degree, seem to be fully up to the standard of
Western universities, and demand a kind of information which it is
extremely important for each generation of practical politicians to possess.
" From the earliest times great attention has been given to the improve
ment of agriculture. Will you indicate the arrangements adopted for that
purpose by the several dynasties ? " " Give an account of the circulating
medium under different dynasties, and state how the currency of the
Sung Dynasty corresponded with one use of paper money at the present
day ? "
It is said that towns where the examinations are held are somewhat
liable to disturbance when filled with candidates, and anti-foreign demon
strations are particularly to be dreaded at such times. But, as Cooper
observes, there are few countries in which the presence of a few thousand
undergraduates brought together from different parts, and subject to no
common authority, would not be likely to conduce to a row. And as,
even in the West, schoolboys and undergraduates are apt to make their
demonstrations in the interest of Conservatism, what can be expected
from Chinese undergraduates but the liveliest contempt for the goggle-
1 Chinese Repository, xiv. p. 264.
2 Middle Kingdom, vol. i. p. 4S8.
3 The Chinese and their Rebellions. T. T. Meadows, p. 327.
4 The Clrinese. W. A. P. Martin, pp. 36, 51.

MISCELLANEOUS LAWS. 381
eyed, grotesquely attired barbarians? This contempt, however, is not
likely to show itself by noisy violence, unless it happens that the examina
tions coincide with the outbreak of a local grievance connected with the
aggressions of French missionaries or English opium-sellers. As an
English traveller observes, " Chinese boys and men never do wanton
mischief," 1 and we can readily believe the assurances of General Tcheng-
ki-tong that Chinese students as a class are studious, and content with
tranquil and mildly intellectual pastimes.
Chinese houses of the well-to-do class are large, serving to receive
what is more like a clan than a family. Each male member of the clan
brings his bride home to the ancestral house, where each natural family
occupies a separate apartment, though the women and children associate
freely and amuse themselves as they please within the enclosure. The
discovery that space conduces to harmony was made many ages ago, no
less a person than the philosopher Chuang-tze having written : " If
there is no room in the house, the wife and her mother-in-law run against
one another." Houses in Southern China are always one storey high, and
in the North, where two storeys are common, the upper floor is used rather
as a summer-house than for everyday habitation.
Houses are described as having a frontage of three, five, seven, or more
rooms, as the case may be, because the arrangement is the same, what
ever the width. The hall, drawing-room, and dining-room lie one behind
the other, and are each flanked with an equal number of rooms on the
right and left, the number varying with the size of the house. The
different sets of rooms are separated by courts, of which there may be any
number in the largest houses. A modest middle-class dwelling of three
rooms to the front, with the equivalent of three floors, one behind the
other, lets for £2 ios. a year.2 A walled garden, with summer-houses
and artificial rocks, is an indispensable appendage to the house in all well-
to-do families ; and as the women of such families do not frequent public
entertainments, it is common for shows of various kinds to be summoned
to give a private performance indoors for their amusement. The largest
houses of this kind occupy with their gardens many acres, though of
course much smaller than a " gentleman's place " of corresponding
importance in England ; and the grounds are made to appear larger than
they really are by winding paths, trellises covered with climbing plants
walling off one part from another, and all the other devices of a landscape
gardener's art3
All Chinese relaxations are required to have an aesthetic flavour. They
play chess out of doors, in chosen spots commanding a picturesque view,4,
or in an elegantly furnished room, with tea or wine ; they enjoy music on
the water, and inscribe appropriate verses on their works of art. Strange
to say, there are no professional artists. Painting, like poetry, is in the
1 Gill, p. 314. 2 Les Flaisirs en Chine, p. 9.
8 P. Osbeck, Voyage to China (1751), ii. p. 306 ; Mrs. Gray, p. 275.
* Les Flaisirs en Chine, p. 189.

382 OWNERSHIP IN CHINA.
hands of amateurs.1 Busts and portraits are executed by professionals, but
otherwise the decorative work done by artisans is all applied to household
or other furniture. According to a well-known novelist,3 a few days after
a poem is produced at court, every family in the capital has a copy.
Chinese verses have to be " shown," not read, because so many of the cha
racters have the same sound.
Theatrical performances are given in restaurants, by desire of the guests,
as well as in public places and private houses. On these occasions the
Chinese applaud the actors and performances they like ; if not pleased,
they keep silence, which is regarded as the most eloquent condemnation.
The Chinese writer so often quoted truly regards this trait as typical.
" Jamais de critiques directes, d'improbation bruyantes, de clameurs in-
diquees. Le silence suffit ... II condamne sans discussion et sans
appel." The critic's dignity and self-respect would be imperilled if he had
to violate the rules of propriety to the extent of saying anything uncivil;
but when it is the rule to say civil things, what can be more crushing than
silence ? An autocrat who is displeased with a courtier's remark says
nothing, and the courtier is annihilated. And on this point, as on others
the democratic Chinese have imperial instincts.
A good many European complaints of the insincerity of Chinese states
men are due to the imperfect comprehension of the traditions of Chinese
politeness and the obligations it imposes on diplomatists. The Chinese
have a strong sense of personal decorum and dignity, and carry reserve to
an extreme. Parents and children do not kiss ; intimate friends do not
touch each other, either playfully or caressingly ; husband and wife, even
among the peasants, begin the day by exchanging formal bows. With
such habits, and a profound sense of the importance of mutual respect un
derlying and inspiring the habits, it is almost impossible to reply with a
point-blank No to any request from a person with whom you are on terms
of civility. Accordingly there is a want of courtesy in driving any one into
a corner, and compelling him to reply either rudely or unveraciously.
If European officials wish to arrive at the true intentions of Chinese
statesmen, they must employ at least as much diplomacy as they would
think necessary in dealing with a very powerful and not very friendly Euro
pean court In such a case, they would not ask point-blank for what they
want ; they would endeavour diplomatically to ascertain what the answer
would be if they did ask for it. If they know that the other high contract
ing party is resolved not to grant what they want, they would not court a
direct refusal, nor would they be deceived by an evasive answer ; and a
very slight familiarity with Chinese literature would show that a verbal
assent may signify something widely removed from an intention to perform
the promised act
A Chinese official thinks it less discourteous to tell a lie than to refuse
a request urged upon him personally with unbecoming vehemence. But
1 Les Flaisirs en Chine, p. 189.
2 Les Deux jeunes files lettrees, p. 32.

MISCELLANEOUS LAWS. 383
he feels as strongly that the European negotiator is an unmannerly bar
barian for forcing him to lie, as the European does that his lying under
pressure is uncivilized and immoral. The Chinaman would feel humiliated
if what he asked for was refused, and it is really as much from the habit of
politeness as from cowardice that he promises without meaning to perform.
This ought to be as well known to the representatives of European
countries in China as another fact, which they have been slow to recognize ;
viz., that the Imperial authority, though nominally supreme, is quite impo
tent to resist or counteract the will and habits of the nation, so that the
Chinese Empire is no more to be bound by a treaty inconsistent with its
unwritten constitution, than the Chinese people are to be terrorised by
looting a palace in which, contrary to propriety, the Son of Heaven has
collected a great many valuables and curiosities. European pressure mis
applied might conceivably result in the overthrow of the Mantchu Dynasty
called Tsing ; but, fortunately for the Chinese people, it will be powerless
to affect their material life except on the veriest fringe and outskirts of all
that is essential to its national character.

CONCLUSIONS.
A sketch of English history and social growth compressing the records of
800 years into half as many pages is apt to repel by the dulness that
comes of brevity. A survey of five times as many centuries would need to
be ten times as long to become less tedious ; and the charitable reader is
entreated to believe that the foregoing pages might have seemed shorter if
they had been a great deal more numerous. They will have served their
purpose if they induce any earnest students who have not yet found a
speciality that promises to occupy a life's devotion, to take the antiquities,
the literature, and the economic history of China seriously, and deal at
length with some of the topics of which the surface only has been
skimmed above.
The attempt to arouse interest in a China which is not that of the Euro
pean trader or the European missionary, but only that of a few hundred
millions of native Chinamen, has never yet been crowned with success.
If it has been made once more, it is not altogether for its own sake — as a
true Sinomane would wish — but to complete the sketch of pre-alphabetic
civilisation, and let China take the place which is probably genealogically
her due, as a sister nation of the Egyptians and Babylonians.
If we knew as much of the life of the " little people " of ancient Egypt
and Babylonia as we know of the Chinese, it might be equally necessary
to plead for a respectful and sympathetic construction of the many traits
unintelligible to the Western world. But as the glamour of ancient history
and legend has made us desire more knowledge than we can ever have of
the people of the Nile and the Euphrates, when the theory of their kinship
with the Chinese is established, details about the latter will have the ad
vantage of satisfying a ready-made demand. The trade of Mesopotamia
and the agriculture of Egypt must have gone on, so far as the masses of
the people were concerned, in much the same way, on the same principles,
and with not dissimilar results, as in the one surviving empire of similar
origin and similar longevity. The records of successive dynasties and
reigns which we seek painfully to rediscover, might be as dull as the
Kang-mou if we had them in full ; but, on the other hand, the national life
of which the kings were but the figure-head, probably went on as peace
fully, as contentedly, and perhaps with the same slow tendency to a
growth in peaceable content, as the national life of China.
Past nations lived their life as their fate and choice determined, with no
view certainly to the instruction of posterity; and hence the truth of

CONCLUSIONS. 385
history must be distorted if we study it exclusively with a view to the
lessons to be learnt from it for our own profit. It is only after reading
the history of Egypt or China as disinterested students, that we can trust
ourselves to generalize as to the conditions of the stability and conserva
tism, which we began by recognising as the common feature of the great
primitive civilizations.
Knowing better than Cicero how great nations may not only decline
in fortune, but actually cease to exist, we cannot doubt that there must
have been "wisdom and breeding" in any people whose life has endured
for two, three, or four thousand years. We have seen that the same kind
of qualities enable tribes as well as nations to flourish unchangingly for
ages, so it is clear that this longevity does not depend upon political
organization. The widest generalization that our facts seem to warrant is that it
depends upon the prevalence among the people of a temperament, which,
when undisturbed by foreign elements, inspires a theoretical and practical
adoption of the homely doctrine, "Live and let live." The relations of
class and sex are influenced throughout by this temperament, but the only
peculiar institutions of the oldest world which are directly inspired by it
are the limitation of interest, the partnership of parents and children in
the family property, and the mortgages redeemable in perpetuity. The
custom of common meals and lotteries without blanks are congenial off
shoots, but the eccentricities of some points of marriage law appear to be
simply owing to a different conception of family relations than has been
general in historic times, which, however, is in no way essential to the
type. The question how far the influence of women in the family can have
affected the general character of the early domestic races was touched
upon in connection with Egyptian custom. We recognise in the whole
history of mankind the development of three main propensities : to make
war, to make love, and to make — things. Very early in the days of civiliza
tion, a few communities seem to have tried the experiment of giving power
to women, or to the sons of women, who made love so potently that great
men desired to enter as consorts in the house they ruled. The Nair, the
Amazon, and the Towarek type of community are exceptional ; though
they should not be ignored in a survey of discarded social experiments ;
the rather that the experiments are shown to be compatible with a con
siderable development of primitive civilization. This page of history has
been so entirely closed that it requires some courage to reclaim it from the
domain of legend. But we see in the records of Egypt how the archaic
power of the married mother — the lady of a house and the lady of a
man — could be associated with orderly domestic life, such as has estab
lished itself in the West, notwithstanding equally arbitrary theories of
paternal and marital power.
Apart from the development of " Mother law," we find that in any
community where exaggerated or exclusive importance is attached to the
vol. 11. — p.c. c c

386 CONCLUSIONS.
occupation of making love, the State falls a prey to luxuriousness and
license, the tyranny of weakness. While if exaggerated or exclusive im
portance is attached to the occupation of war, the State falls a prey to the
tyranny of strength, and the genial amenities of social and family life are
lost in a hard gradation of ranks, based upon power — of strength of will
instead of charitable wisdom.
The third ruling propensity is the feeblest in primitive society, and is
derivative in its origin, since men begin by making weapons wherewith to
fight, and decorations wherewith to charm their fellows. It is only in the
third place that they begin to make — instead of finding — 'food and shelter,
to multiply the animal and vegetable products available for those purposes
by nature ; and there is scarcely any article of human manufacture which
cannot be traced back to one of these three promptings of industry. The
archaic States which escaped the dangers named above did so in virtue of
their love of industry, agriculture, and commerce. Some succumbed when
the love of commerce overcame the love of peace, and seduced traders
into wars of aggression. Others succumbed when the habit of peace or
love of ease had grown too strong for a race of producers to be willing to
fight in defence of their own eunomia.
War and luxury are fatal to the endurance and stability of any State
where they absorb the energies of the mass of the population. Art, letters,
and philosophy only provide occupation for the few, and it seems one of
the widest generalizations from the experience of nations, that a national
life good enough to last for centuries, to say nothing of millenniums, is
only attainable when the mass of the people find their principal occupation
in the exercise of peaceful industrial arts. That is to say, in communities
which have allowed or encouraged their material wants to grow, so that
men who have food, shelter, and clothing in kind and quantity sufficient
for their needs, employ their surplus time and energies in varying the
food, adorning the clothing, and in furnishing the shelter with luxuries and
decorations such as admit of indefinite multiplication and increase.
The average man now needs three things for his happiness— bread,
work, and love.
Love and bread are desired for their own sakes, but work, like war, is
only desirable as an occupation, something to provide a succession of
varied, and, so far as possible, pleasurable sensations. We have been
rather apt to assume that the industrial civilization which meets these
wants is an invention of modern Europe ; but if it were so, we should
scarcely venture to claim stability as a characteristic of industrial States.
The fact is that the three primitive propensities interlace in various pro
portions. Industry has been enlisted in the service of luxury, and it has
also been pursued by methods borrowed from the arts of war. Men will
fight for gain instead of glory, and in their work for gain they will contend
as angrily as if their object were, not to obtain it, but to overcome their
fellow-toilers. And by the time an industrial system becomes fully elabo
rated, the pursuit of wealth becomes dissociated from production, and the

CONCLUSIONS. 387
most successful votaries of fortune are found to be, not those who do most
to increase the material riches of the race, but those who succeed in
seizing for themselves the largest share of the wealth previously produced,
it matters not by whom. The influence of the proprietor succeeds or
continues that of the warrior, and, as in the Irish laws, men acquire
chieftain rank by the number of their cows.
The industrial States which have achieved stability are exactly those in
which the instinct to " live and let live " is stronger than the propensity to
seek economic advantages contentiously or by force. But there are gra
dations of masterfulness in the least contentious communities, and the
most ancient records in the world show us chiefs and rulers in possession
of wealth and power. The primitive chief or monarch receives voluntary
tribute, and is looked upon as the treasurer of his tribe or nation, not
because he has skill or industry to accumulate all the goods he is expected
to dispense, but because he has more imagination, more power of invent
ing uses for them.
The large proprietor of primitive society does not catch, grow, or manu
facture with his own hands the articles which constitute his wealth. His
ownership is moreover largely titular ; the instinct of appropriation has
outstripped the power of enjoying as well as the power of creating material
objects, and these objects must be shared with others as a means to
obtaining the ends really desired, such as personal services, tokens of
honour, service in war, and the like. It would be as unjust to trace the
origin of secular government to the greed of kings as to attribute the
invention of religions to the covetousness of priests. Nevertheless the
historical development of political authority would have been impossible
without the early growth of economical authority which gave the kings of
Hesiod their name of " gift eaters," and made the great men of Egypt
givers of rations to the rest. So long as the many, in whom the instincts
of self-assertion are feeble, have ample rations issued to them, they are not
only content to supply, at their own expense, the larger wants of the
acquisitive few, but are actually grateful to the self-elected chief, who gives
to them when they need it, what they gave to him when they did not
need it.
Governments have been founded upon this common form of human
weakness, but the long-lived domestic civilizations started with a happier
inspiration. The grateful illusion of the populace was taken seriously,
and the sovereign together with his revenue were assumed to exist for the
benefit of the people ; the fore-thought and self-assertion of the typical
chief were treated as qualities to be used in the service of the many, not
for the advantage of the one. Political philosophy began, but it began
with treatises on the duties of the king, the local governor, or the minister.
It was a commonplace with Chinese historians and politicians that the
people were discontented and disobedient if the Government was careless
or corrupt. In other words, the contrat social of primitive States promised
taxes and loyalty to the ruler, whose wisdom and virtue provided all his

3 88 CONCLUSIONS.
subjects with the means of living. Brigandage or revolution put an end,
sooner or later, to the sway of those who failed to comply with this
demand. " The people have certain natural instincts," as the Taoist philosopher
observes, " to weave and clothe themselves, to till and feed themselves :
these are common to all humanity, and all are agreed thereon. Such
instincts are called ' heaven-sent' " The moral philosophy of Egypt
and China recognised no higher ideal than that of "a man useful to
others," who enabled the multitudes to follow these heaven-sent instincts
in peace.
The surplus production which follows from a national habit of tilling and
weaving forms the fund out of vvhich the higher wants of advancing civili
zation may be met ; but in Egypt and China this surplus was never large
enough to do more than provide liberally for the wholesome life of the
masses, and so we do not meet with further speculations as to the principles
on vvhich surplus wealth should be distributed. The well-being demanded
by sages for the multitude was not regarded as a reward due to them for their
economic services. Such an idea is not primitive, and the line of thought
seems to be rather, that the emperor or king cannot be ruler of a thriving,
i.e. a rich and powerful country, unless he sees to it that his people do
thrive. While slavery prevails there is equally little room for the view
that economic rewards are naturally reserved as pay for services. The
reward belongs, in fact, to those who capture or constrain those who serve.
It is only by an after-thought — or after-belief — of modern economic theory
that wealth or capital is assumed to be exclusively the fruit and recom
pense of industry and saving.
The prosperity of countries is frequently measured by historians by their
wealth, and it is quite true that increase of wealth, like increase of popu
lation, gives a presumption in favour of healthy progress. Declining
wealth, like declining population, is a symptom of the decay which follows
political and economic disorganization. But it is possible for the real
wealth of a country to continue great, and for its apparent wealth even to
increase, though its downward course has already begun. When a country
is rich because many of its members are engaged, day by day, in acquiring
an ample competence for themselves, by the exercise of arts which are in
the main useful, its wealth is both a sign and an effect of healthy life.
But great wealth spent in wanton and dissolute luxury is neither a cause,
an effect, nor a symptom of a sound condition of the body politic,
and Chinese thinkers deserve credit for their consistent recognition of
this fact.
The history of all commercial nations seems to show that the economic
virtues, as we may call them, are only purely beneficial so long as
economists are engaged in utilizing and appropriating objects in the
natural world. Men and women can be appropriated like sheep and
horses, and just the same qualities which serve in subduing the rest of the
world enable one man to bring numbers of his fellows into subjection.

CONCLUSIONS. 389
And the conclusion to vvhich the history of ownership in these latter days
seems to point is, that to secure the greatest happiness, and still more the
greatest good, of the greatest number, it is essential to regulate the econo
mical utilization of man by man, by principles vvhich are not called for
in regulating the utilization of any other source of wealth. No harm is
done when one man " has," or owns as much game as he can shoot, as
many sheep or chickens as he can rear, as much corn as he can grow, as
many shoes as he can make. Society only suffers when a man " has "
troops of other men at his command, and through that possession, whether
the troops be called subjects, serfs, or " the employed," can control powers
so far beyond those of a single human being, that no human being has
wisdom or virtue enough to wield them.
In China, and to a less extent in Egypt, after the first development of a
quasi-territorial aristocracy, moral authority and influence became disso
ciated from wealth. The sovereignty was put, so to speak, in commission :
the king or emperor might be described in French republican phrase, as
the Chef du pouvoir executif but the real control and inspiration of the
government was in the hands of the literati, or the scribes and priests.
In China, as elsewhere, the attempt was made to use wealth as a stepping-
stone to power, though the traditions which demanded liberality from the
rich impeded accumulation. But the attempt was victoriously resisted by
the joint efforts of the Crown, which saw possible pretenders and rivals in
the great agglomerators, and of the learned who felt that their influence
must expire in a plutocracy. There is in China the same tendency as
elsewhere for lands and money to gravitate into the possession of some
few persons, and out of the possession of the many others ; and undoubtedly
in China, as elsewhere, such inequalities, when established, tend to intensify
themselves. The law and popular custom, as we have seen, have steadily, and on the
whole successfully, resisted the growth of inequality, and this in a com
munity addicted beyond all others to the avocations of industry and trade.
Human beings can be used, and can be brought to acquiesce in being used,
as chattels by other human beings. But if the organized wisdom of the
State disapproves of such utilization, it can be impeded by legislation, as
slavery was suppressed in England and agglomeration in China. In other
words, the tendency of the natural inequality of men to reflect and exaggerate
itself in the inequality of their possessions can be controlled by legislation.
The history of ownership in China alone establishes this fact, which political
economists of the a priori school have been apt to contest.
In the West, where the power of ideas and the charm of ideals are as
short-lived as the ascendency of States and the organization of Govern
ments, we find it hard to believe that society can really have been influ
enced from age to age by the same trite phrases, the same simple copy-book
morality, with precepts such as western Yangs would hardly care to criti
cise, because they have no more direct influence on modern life than the
truths of the multiplication table. It seems, however, that the maxims of

390 CONCL USIONS.
political morality formulated by the ancient sages of China and Egypt
corresponded so nearly with the best tendencies of the best men of their
day, and with the conscious wishes of the multitudes, that they continued
to be acted upon, through the centuries, often enough and consistently
enough to make it seem that the maxims were the ruling and guiding power
in the State.
The thought of the few and the actions of the many went together.
Conformity was the rule, and hence the result was attained of making
moral improprieties contrary to custom. Men may object on principle to
doing what is wrong, but they object by instinct to doing what is unusual.
And even ill-disposed persons find it easier to " do as ten people do,"
when the duty of relatives to the family group, and that of neighbours to
the village group, is so clearly defined by social custom, that an innovating
offender will be stared at
The stability of such conservative communities is conditioned by their
merits, by the intrinsic reasonableness of the dominant custom, not in the
least by their limitations, of which little has been said above, because
European self-esteem is already quite sufficiently alive to them. The con
sideration of the problem how to combine progress and stability in modern
States may seem to belong rather to the ethics of the future than the his
tory of the past ; but it may help to explain the force and finality of Egyp
tian and Chinese morality, if we realise the obstacles in the way of an
equally exhaustive and convincing treatment of modern economic problems
by the priests and literati of the West.
A working creed must not have too many articles to be carried easily in
an average mind; and the application of every article of the creed to every
difficulty and temptation of the daily life must be perfectly certain, plain,
and easy. Only so can the habit of practical conformity be established,
which, as theologians know, is one of the surest bulwarks to speculative
faith. When belief and conduct go together along the path of nature3
vvhich provides satisfaction for the heaven-sent instincts of the multitudes,
the elements of disturbance are reduced to a minimum ; virtue merges it
self in custom, and custom is a dyke which few men have vices voluminous
enough to overflow.
The power of such customary creeds can be measured even in Europe
by the influence exercised in a few cases by what we may call class
morality. The medical profession, for instance, is bound by rules which
exact from its members, as a matter of technical propriety, conduct which
in other men would be praised as remarkable unselfishness or devoted
charity. In time past, some approach has been made to the construction
of an ideal for the land-owning country gentleman, embodying a good
many familiar old- Egyptian traits. And at the present day the artisan
member of a Trade Union has and acts upon a clearly defined theory of
his duty to every member of his own trade, and to the trade organizations
of other workmen, while he is feeling his way towards a formula of general
applicability to the wans of disorganized and unemployed workers.

CONCLUSLONS. 391
But even these incomplete essays towards a class morality are the excep
tion, and they rather accentuate the difference between East and West.
Changes in the status of individuals are quite as common in China as
in England, if not more common ; but the labourer's son, who has worked
at a trade and become a rich merchant, the artisan's son who has become
a Government official, the officer's son who becomes a tradesman, do not
have to change their creed as they rise or fall in the world. Everybody
knows the application of each moral commonplace to the duties of every
normal relationship. The individual finds the place in the social scale for
which his skill or character fit him, but in each place he is equally hedged
in by custom, giving him always the same kind of help and imposing the
same kind of obligations.
Even exceptional misfortunes or exceptional misbehaviour are provided
against by a customary machinery intended to guard against the creation
of a class of social failures. The men who, in bad times, take to brigand
age in China are of the same material as the criminal classes of the West ;
but in good times, if flood or famine desolate a province, land and seed-
corn are given to the destitute, and those fit for nothing else can at least
win food for themselves from the soil, and are under no temptation to
adopt a career of crime. Smaller individual calamities are dealt with as
they arise by the liberality of the nearest rich relations or neighbours, ex
acted not as a virtue, but as a custom. And thus, though any rich man
may become poor by ill conduct or ill fortune, there is no class of poor in
the habit of overstepping the boundary between poverty and pauperism.
Now it would surely be unreasonable to expect that the changes and
chances of our much more varied and difficult industrial life should never
lead to calamities, either isolated or widespread, as complete as those en
countered in China. But we have no machinery for promoting " harmony
and benignity " on a vast enough scale to provide for them. The English
Poor Law was an attempt to do so ; and it saves the destitute, who are
not too proud to eat " Poor man come here food," from absolute
starvation ; but it aims at nothing eise, and has achieved nothing more,
except the addition to the economic vocabulary of the words " pauper "
and " to pauperize."
In the communities of the West, we weed out our social failures, we
throw them — or let them sink — into what we call the residuum. Our
social residuum lives and propagates its species in a medium as well pre
pared for the growth of anti-social vices as the hay tea or chicken broth
in which the amateurs of microbes cultivate their disease germs. But the
man of science calls his cultivation successful if the virus grows milder and
less fatal in each generation. His media are sterilized by the most elabo
rate precautions ; everything in which the germs of disease delight, not
merely morbid matter, dirt, decay, but even healthy atoms of animal or
vegetable -substance, which, having been alive, are subject to decomposi
tion, are to be excluded, saving just such a simple minimum as may serve
to keep the microbe alive and multiplying. Small wonder that under

392 CONCLUSIONS.
this treatment it grows less virulent, it is tamed till it becomes a harmless
inoculant, and might in time lose all its power to infect
But we, instead, plant the children of our social failures in a soil where
their parents' vices and defects must become intensified, and where every
kind of quality and propensity injurious to the individual and to society
must develop. The children of drunkards, nurtured in the lowest depths
of city squalor, have their hereditary craving for alcohol stimulated by
chronic hunger, exhaustion, and foul air. The children of vagrants, of
men and women with indolent and ineffective brains or bodies, weak in
will, irresolute in positive desire, in whom all the normal activities and
energies of civilized life are undeveloped, children of this kind are placed
in a social atmosphere fitted to stifle the hopes and courage of the best
endowed, surrounded exclusively by influences fitted to graft upon the
native stock of incapacity all the feebler vices of human degeneracy.
We pay covetousness its wages in the same coin as skill, and we visit
feebleness with the same industrial penalties as crime. We let the,
perhaps, not even specially feeble children of feebleness grow up in the
atmosphere of misery in which we leave vice and feebleness to fester ; and
the two interbreed, crossing each fresh importation from without with a
deeper strain of hereditary corruption. We ridicule the idea of making
occupation hereditary, yet we acquiesce in the propagation of classes
in which one generation has nothing to bequeath to the next save bad
health, bad habits, and general incapacity for wholesome and serviceable
living. We acquiesce in all this, not as morally right or practically expedient,
but as the natural or necessary consequence of the free play of individual
enterprise in the struggle for existence. And, so far as the heterogeneous
society of the West can be said to guide its conduct, by any creed, it is
probably inspired by a kind of faith in the healing power of freedom.
There is no new thing under the sun, and English Liberalism agrees with
Chinese Taoism : " There is such a thing as letting mankind alone ; there
has never been such a thing as governing mankind." Philosophical
Anarchism is the logical outcome of the optimistic doctrine that the best
possible world will be made by leaving every one at liberty to do the best
he can for himself. But in the West, as in the East, the censorship of the
historiographer modifies the individual view of what is best
It is a foolish fatalism to assume that everything which occurs naturally
must occur necessarily, or that nothing new can become natural. Every
historical occurrence is at once natural and necessary, in the sense of being
necessarily due to causes naturally operating on existing minds under
existing conditions. But men act under the influence of felt desires, and
the unforeseen results of their action are sometimes inconsistent with the
ends intentionally aimed at ; and this discovery is itself a natural motive
for a change of action. The malign influence exercised in the middle of
the present century, by the accepted doctrines of political economy, lay
exactly in the encouragement they gave to the delusion that all natural

CONCLUSIONS. 393
tendencies were unalterable, even by experience revealing new evils con
sequent on their operation.
The giraffe is a classical example of adaptation by natural selection to
the struggle for existence. And it is true that its elongated neck enables
it to crop leaves beyond the reach of ordinary quadrupeds. But, on the
other hand, its withers are so high that, in spite of its long neck, it cannot
reach to graze without spreading its fore legs wide apart to make them
shorter. The brute creation cannot modify its circumstances, and may
have to acquiesce in a choice of evils. The giraffe must either starve
among the tree tops or straddle in the grassy plain ; but homo sapiens has
no good qualities with inevitable drawbacks. He can make ladders for
the tallest trees and scythes for the meadow sward. He can modify the
circumstances, including his own impulses, under which any serviceable
quality may lead to incidental ill results.
Thus, if the uncontrolled liberty of the swift and strong to push and
jostle their neighbours in the industrial race results in the accidental over
throw and maiming of the feebler competitors, there is nothing to prevent
the common sense of the majority, who are neither athletes nor cripples,
from laying down rules to make the game less dangerous while leaving it
still sufficiently interesting to call out the skill of the players. Energy and
enterprise are not necessarily paralyzed because they are forbidden to
produce suffering. On the contrary, they may be stimulated by sympathy
as well as appetite, and roused to the stronger efforts needed if they are to
meet wants wider than the most ambitious individual can feel for himself.
To get wealth for one may take but little wisdom or virtue, to get wealth
and well-being for the multitudes is a task beyond any but the master minds
of every age, and worthy of these.
We agree with Mencius that there is no difference between killing a
man with a sword, and letting him die because we do not know how to
regulate the struggle for existence ; and there is no general disposition to
repudiate " the everlasting obligations which are due by man to man."
The problem has reached the intellectual stage, and we need men of science
to show how the felt obligations may be met almost more than moral
teaching to rouse the sense of duty. If doctrines as simple as the copy
book morality of Egypt and China would meet our case, we should not
lack sages to preach, nor multitudes to practise its easy lessons. And if
we claim for the Western intellect a wider range and a stronger grasp of
natural fact than has been attained in the Middle Kingdom, we must sup
pose it adequate to meet the more onerous demand.
On the face of it, it does not appear to be a more complicated problem,
to apply the principles of righteousness to the ramifications of trade and
industry, than to apply the principles of pure mathematics to the construc
tion of the Forth Bridge. All that is needed is that our moralists should
acquaint themselves as fully and precisely with the facts of industry and
commerce as our mathematicians do with the properties of matter. The
processes of the operative, the manufacturer, the warehouseman, the car-

394 CONCLUSIONS.
rier, the merchant, and the retailer must be put under the microscope, and
every detail of them examined under the dry light of disinterested science,
when much that is unfit to face the pencil of the recorders will at once
shrink out of existence. Bad customs are as easily formed and as easily
broken as good ones ; but class morality is more often over-indulgent than
over-exacting, and many anti-social customs defy the reformer with the
retort: " It is what everybody does." But if "what everybody does " is
what nobody would like to be known to do — by the majority, who are
under no temptation to do it — we are but a step from the time when the
reformers can say : " Nobody does that now," a sentence which fulfils
itself. When the social problem has been reduced to its simplest terms, by
eliminating every accidental complication, it will still remain more difficult
than those which oppressed Confucius when he enforced the necessity
of " rectifying names." The ties of blood and neighbourhood are more
obvious than the bonds of common occupation or common knowledge,
of related occupations and interacting pursuits. There is the difference,
so to speak, between a sum in simple arithmetic and a problem in algebra.
A common formula has to be found for relationships in which all the terms
are dissimilar, and it should be expressed, so far as possible, in significant
symbols, to assist the imagination in visualizing the concrete realities with
vvhich the problems deal. But here also the knowledge of facts assists
the perception of relations, and the formula of relationship stated in one
mathematical proposition becomes a term used in the solution of some
higher problem.
We recognise in theory the responsibilities of relationships as remote
as fellow-citizenship and nationality, and pay rates and taxes with the
understanding that town and state must feed the starving and nurse the
sick and helpless poor. And the intermediate relationships between grades
of producers in the same industry to each other, between the producers
in one industry collectively to those in other industries, the relations of
the grades and the groups to the community at large, and of the com
munity to individual members of each section of the industrial classes-
all these relationships only need to be known, and the incidents natural
to them classified and described, for the obligations arising out of them
to be freely and willingly acknowledged. Human needs, human instincts,
and human perceptions do not alter in their nature, and the dislocations
of intricate social adjustments, which follow from the natural course of
historic development, will not prove beyond the skill of social surgery to
reduce, if the need is recognised for encyclopaedic wisdom in the professors
of the healing art.
The best possible life does not present itself by nature, without effort
or reflection, to any class of men. And to the imaginative few it is not
necessarily at once self-evident that the fullest enjoyment of the highest
life presupposes for its aesthetic background, as well as for its material
foundation, the well-being of contented multitudes. But the most intense

CONCLUSIONS. 395
and durable human pleasures come from the exercise of faculty, and the
born rulers of mankind are left pleasureless so long as, by a misconception
of their destiny, they seek to force or cajole the multitude into acts of un
willing, and therefore imperfect and short-lived obedience. In like man
ner, the tilling and weaving multitudes — who are content with mere life,
love, and work, and the cheap pleasures which beautify the satisfaction of
these heaven-sent instincts— cannot enjoy the exercise of those faculties
which form the groundwork of an empire's grandeur, unless the science of
government is so understood, as to remove all obstacles from their chosen
path of conformity to nature.
The sovereign's commands are obeyed by a contented and prosperous
people, when all commands are rightly directed to secure the content and
welfare of the obedient masses. This is neither government nor anarchy ;
it is the interpretation of natural fact. We have read, in the somewhat
cumbrous English which disguises the sagacity of Thang the Successful,
that " great heaven has conferred a moral sense upon the people which
shows, to those who comply with it, that their nature is invariably right ;
so that the sovereign's task is only to enable them to pursue tranquilly the
course that is natural to them."
The course natural to the multitudes is to make things, to contract
marriages of affection, and to revere the wisdom of the wise, who succeed
in interpreting those laws of heaven and earth which regulate the satisfaction
of human instincts. And the pursuance of this course holds out, unless
human nature has altered in 5,000 years, the best prospect of social and
economic welfare to the multitudes of the West, as well as to the ancient
nations, versed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and the learning of the
Chaldaeans.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

Vol. i. P. 42.

Egyptian Chronology and Dynasties.
As the general reader cannot be expected to retain— if he has ever
possessed — a working acquaintance with the order of Egyptian kings and
dynasties, while there is no space in the text for a summary of Egyptian
history, it may be convenient to append a skeleton sketch of Egyptian
chronology, which will at least serve to give a rough idea of the date and
order of the monuments, reigns, and inscriptions referred to. Those
purely historical questions which are still matter of controversy may be
passed over, as they have little bearing on the special subject of Egyptian
economy. As to the most doubtful point of all, the date of the first foundation of
the monarchy, or the accession of King Menes, we must any way be
content with a very vague and conjectural estimate. Dr. Brugsch sums up
the disagreement of the doctors of his own country by a short table of the
various dates proposed for the first Pharaohs : viz. —

Boeckh . .

. 5702 B.C.

Lauth . .

• 4157 B.C.

Unger . .

• 56l3 .3

Lepsius

• 3892 „

Brugsch

¦ 4455 ..

Bunsen . .

• 3623 >.

And we may add to these authorities that of Dr. Birch, who named 3000
B.C. as the latest date which can possibly be assigned to Menes, and
Meyer, who gives 3180 B.C. as the minimum date for the beginning of the
Egyptian State.
Erman gives the following as rough approximate estimates of the latest
dates probable for beginnings of the chief dynasties : —

astii

:s IV., V.

. at latest,

2830 B.C.

)>

VI.

33

253° 33

?»

XII.

33

2130 33

^

XIII.

33

193° 33

jj

XVIII.

33

i53°-I32o B.C.

>>

XIX.

33

I320-II8O „

>»

XX.

3-

I I80-I050 ,,

The chief authorities for the names and order of the kings are still the
copyists of Manetho's lists of the kings of Egypt, what is known as the
Turin papyrus, which gives similar lists, unfortunately in a fragmentary

400

APPENDICES.

state, and the so-called table of Abydos, found in a temple of Seti I., which
gives the names of sixty-five kings, from Mena to the end of the Twelfth
Dynasty, and of eleven from the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty to
the father of Rameses II. , the Greek Sesostris (circ. 1350 B.C.). A tablet
found at Saqqarah reproduces, with some inaccuracies, the names given
in the Abydos list ; and a list found at Karnak, showing Thothmes III.
adoring the cartouches of sixty-one of his predecessors, though it supplies
some missing names of rulers between the Thirteenth and the Seventeenth
Dynasties, is chiefly interesting as showing the predilections of Thothmes
himself, whose favourite ancestor was Usurtasen I.
The materials for a chronological list are some direct statements in the
lists as to the length of a few reigns or dynasties ; the number of monu
ments dated in such and such a year of the best known kings, which
warrant the inference that the reign ended not long after the last dated
inscription, and general inferences as to the average duration of reigns,
taken in connection with some estimate of the total number of successive
reigns, vvhich last again depends on the view taken, necessarily on conjec
tural grounds, as to the overlapping of independent or rival dynasties. In
view of all these sources of uncertainty, later writers in general judiciously
refrain from propounding a detailed chronological scheme ; but in the sixth
volume of the new series of the Records of the Past, Professor Sayce has
brought together all the names, fragmentary or complete, given in all the
lists. The subjoined table includes all the kings (with the exception of
the interminable Thirteenth Dynasty) mentioned in any of the monuments,
but of course without repeating the names which occur in two or more lists.

Dynasty I.

1. Meni.
5. Hesep or Sapti.
2. Teta.
6. Merba.
3. Atota.
7. Semenptah (?).
4. Ata.
8. Kabeh.
Dynasty II.
9-
Butau.
14. Perabsen.
10.
Kakau.
15. Tata I.
1 1.
Bainuteru
(Binothris).
16. Nefer-ka-ra.
12.
Utnas.
17. Sekeri-nefer-ka.
i3-
Send.
18. Tefa.
19. Bubui.
Dynasty III.
20.
Nebka.'
25. Nefer-ka-ra.
21.
Serbes.
26. Tosertasis (M.).
22.
Tata II.
27. Huni.
23-
Set-es.
28. Snefru.
24-
Neb-ka-ra.
29. Kerpheres (M.)
APPENDICES.

Dynasty IV.
3°-
Soris (M).
34-
Men-ka-ra.
31-
Khufu.
35-
Ratoises (M.).
32-
Ratatf.
36-
Bikheres (M.).
35-
Khafra.
37-
Shepseskaf.
401
38. Thamphthis (M.).
The names marked (M.) are found only in Manetho.
39-4°-41. 42.
Userkaf.Sahu-ra. Keka. Nefer-f-ra.
Dynasty V.
43. Shepses-ka-ra.
44. Kha-nefer-ra.
45. Ra-n-user.
46. Men-kau-hor.
47. Tat-ka-ra.
48. Unas.
Dynasty VI.
49. Teta.
50. User-ka-ra.
51. Meri-ra (Pepi I.).
52. Mer-en-ra (Sokar-m-saf I.).
53. Nefer-ka-ra (Pepi IL).
54. Mer-en-ra (Sokar-m-saf II.).
55. Queen Nitaker (Nitocris). 63. Serhlinib.
56. 57-
58. 59-
60.61.62.
Nefer-ka. Nefrus.
Ab-en-ra I.
Ab-en-ra II.
Hanti.Pest-sat-en-sopd. Paitasu.
Dynasties VII., VIII., IX, and X.
64. Mer-em-ra Zaf-em-saf.
65. Nuter-ka-ra. Men-ka-ra.Nefer-ka-ra.
Khrati.
Se . . .
Ur . . .
66.67.68.
69. 70.71. . .
72. Set . . .
73. Ha . . .
74. Ka-meri-ra (?).
75 (Nefer-ka) ra.
76. Nefer-ka-ra Nebi.
77. Tat-ka-ra Shema.
78. Nefer-ka-ra Khnotu.
79. Men-en-hor.
80. Snefer-ka.
81. Ra-n-ka.
82. Nefer-ka-ra Terel.
83. Nefer-ka-hor.
84. Nefer-ka-ra Pepi-seneb.
85. Snefer-ka-ra Annu.
86. (Nefer) kau-ra I.
87. Nefer-kau-ra II.
88. Nefer-kau-hor.
89. Nefer-ar-ka-ra.
The Turin papyrus gives 355 years and 10 days as the sum of years of
the Tenth Dynasty. It is possible that the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth
vol. 11. — p.c d D
402 APPENDICES.
Dynasties, and perhaps even the kings of the Sixth Dynasty after
Nitocris (Nitaker), whose names are given by the Turin papyrus only,
may have reigned simultaneously with each other, and with the kings of
the Tenth Dynasty.1 Dynasty XL
90. User-n-ra.
91. Neb-nem-ra.
92. Ana.
93. Antef I.
94. Mentuhotep I. and Queen Khnum-nefer-het Mentuhotep I.
95. Antef II.
96. Antef III.
97. Nuter-nefer-Neb-taui-ra Mentuhotep II.
98. Antef IV.
99. Neb-kher-ra Mentuhotep III. and Queen Aah.
100. Antef V.
101. S-ankh-ka-ra. Dynasty XII.
102. Amenemhat I.
103. Usurtasen I. (first with his father, and then alone).
104. Amenemhat II. (first with his father, and then alone).
105. Usurtasen II. (first with his father, and then alone).
106. Usurtasen III.
107. Amenemhat III.
108. Amenemhat IV.
109. Queen Sebek-nefru-ra.
Duration of dynasty, 213 years 1 month 17 days.
The Thirteenth Dynasty, according to the Turin papyrus, included 120
to 150 names, among which are seven kings Sebekhotep. The tablet of
Karnak gives ten kings of the dynasty, the last six of whom correspond
with the names in the Turin papyrus between the Twenty-second and
the Twenty-eighth. The length of the reigns is legible in fifteen cases,
amounting to a little more than seventy years in all ; say, an average
of 4| years to a reign, or at the rate of about twenty-four reigns to
a century. The following seven names stand in order from 4 to 10 in the
Karnak tablet, and 17, 22, 23, 25-28 in the Turin papyrus. Evidently
Egyptian history may be expanded or abridged almost indefinitely accord
ingly as we reckon ten kings or over 150 to this one dynasty. It is quite
possible that the group of kings selected for commemoration by Thothmes
included all the princes of the dynasty who really wore the double crown.
For the Fourteenth Dynasty, the Turin papyrus gives eighteen names,
nearly all imperfect, followed by a blank.
1 See for the origin of the Eleventh Dynasty and the length of the preceding period,
Maspero, Ltudes, 1893, vol. i. p. 172.

APPENDICES. 4°3
Dynasty XIII.
# • * *
Ra-sekhem-khu-taui (Sebekhotep III.).
Ra sekhem-(khu-taui) (Sebekhotep IV.).
Kha-seshesh-ra Neferhotep, son of Ha-ankh-f.
Kha-nefer-ra (Sebekhotep V.).
Kha-ka-ra.
Kha-ankh-ra (Sebekhotep VI.).
Kha-hotep-ra (Sebekhotep VII.).

Shalati.Bnan.

Dynasties XV. and XVI.
Khaian User nub-ra.
Apepi I., Ra-aa-user.
Apepi IL, Ra-aa ab-taui.
Dynasty XVII.
1. Skenen-ra Taa I. (contemp. of Apepi IL).
2. Skenen-ra Taa II. Aa.
3. Skenen-ra Taa III. Ken.
4 Uat-kheper-ra Karnes and his wife, Aah-hotep.
Dynasty XVIII.
5. Aahmes and his wife, Nefert-ari-Aahmes.
6. Amenhotep I. (his mother at first regent).
7. Thothmes I. and wife, Aahmes Meri-Amen.
8. Thothmes II. and his wife (sister), Hatasu (Hashepsu).
9. Hatasu (alone for sixteen years).
10. Thothmes III.
11. Amenhotep II.
12. Thothmes IV. and wife, Mut-em-ua.
13. Amenhotep III. and wife, Teie.
14. Amenhotep IV.1 (Khuenaten) and wife, Nefri-Thi.
15. Sa'a-nekht and wife, Meri-Aten.
16. Tut-ankh-amen Khepru-neb-ra and wife, Ankh-nes-Amen.
1 7. Aten-ra-nefer-nefru-mer-aten.
18. Ai-kheper-khepru-ar-ma-ra and wife, Thi.
19. Horem-hib. Dynasty XIX.
20. Rameses I.
21. Seti I. (Mineptah I.) and wife, Tua.
22. Rameses II. (b.c. 1348-1281).
23. Mineptah II. (Mer-n-ptah).
24. Seti IL, Mineptah III.
25. Amen-mesu Hik-an Mer-kha-ra Setep-n-ra.
26. Mineptah IV. and wife, Ta-user.
27. Thuoris (M.), no doubt the same as Ta-user.
1 The Horus of Manetho and Khuriya of the Tell-el-Amarna tablets.

404 APPENDICES. Dynasty XX.
28. Set-nekht Merer-Mi-amen (defeats Arisu).
29. Rameses III.
30. Rameses IV.
31. Rameses V.
32. Rameses VI.
33. Rameses VI I.
34. Rameses VI 1 1.
35. Rameses IX.
36. Rameses X.
37. Rameses XI.
38. Rameses XII.
39. Rameses XIII. Dynasty XXI. (Illegitimate).
40. Hir-hor Si-amen and wife, Notem-mut
41. Piankhi and wife, Teut-amen.
42. Pinotem I. and wife, Hontaui.
43. Pinotem II. and wife, Ma-ka-ra.
44. Men-kheper-ra and wife, Isis-em-kheb.
45. Pinotem III. Dynasty XXI. (Legitimate).

46. Nes-bindidi-Mi-amen.
47. Pi-seb-kha-n I.
48. Nephelkeres (M).

49. Amenophthis (M.).
50. Osokhor (M.).
51. Pinotem.

52. Pi-seb-kha-n II. Mi-amen.
Dynasty XXII.
46. Shashank I.
47. Usarkon I., married daughter of Pisebkhan.
48. Takelet I.
49. Usarkon II.
50. Shashank II.
51. Takelet II.
52. Shashank III.
53. Pimai Mi-amen User-ma-ra Setep-n-amen.
54. Shashank IV. Dynasty XXIII.
55. Se-her-ab-ra Petu-si-bast
56. Usarkon III.
57. P-si-mut User-ra Setep-n-ptah.
Interregnum. Dynasty XXIV.
58. Bak n-ran-f Uah-ka-ra (Bocchoris)

APPENDICES. 405
Dynasty XXV.
59. Shabaka Nefer-ka-ra (defeated by Sargon b.c. 720).
60. Shabataka Tat-ka-ra.
61. Taharka Nefer-tum-khu-ra (Tirhakah).
Interregnum. Dynasty XXVI.
62. Psamtik L, Uah-ab-ra and wife, Mehet-Usekh, B.C. 664-610.
63. Nekhau Nem-ab-ra and wife, Mi-mut Nitaker, B.C. 610-594 (Necho).
64. Psamtik II. Nefer-ab-ra and wife, Nitaker, B.C. 594-589.
65. Uah-ab-ra Haa-ab-ra and wife, Aah-hotep, B.C. 589-570 (Apries).
66. Aah-mes Si-nit Khnum-ab-ra and wife, Thent-kheta, B.C. 570-526
(Amasis).
67. Psamtik III., Ankh-ka-n-ra, B.C. 526-525.
We have in the above list 109 kings' names before, and 67 after the
Thirteenth Dynasty ; but even apart from the doubtful question of the
Thirteenth Dynasty itself, it is impossible to say how much should be
allowed for overlapping reigns in the remaining 176. It is impossible to
suggest any general average for the duration of reigns, without reference to
the historical circumstances of the time and country. In England we
reckon thirty-seven reigns, counting Cromwell as one, from the Norman
conquest to the present day. In this number there are certainly a fair
proportion of long reigns, and even the periods of civil strife do not always
result in exceptionally rapid succession. We can hardly suppose that
ancient Egypt was more favourable than modern England to long life or
long reigns ; indeed, we cannot be far wrong in supposing that it will have
been if anything less favourable, and that an average of five reigns to a
century is by no means certainly to be counted on in a land where fifteen
reigns taken by chance averaged seventy years.
If instead of English kings we take the reigns of the Roman emperors
from Augustus to Augustulus, or from B.C. 31 to a.d. 470, a period of 505
years, we get instead of the average of five reigns, that of ten reigns to a
century, and this without counting the second names of associated Caesars,
which would raise the average to about twelve. But it is scarcely fair to
use these petty and ephemeral dynasties of the West as a measuring rod
for Egyptian antiquity. A more appropriate standard is that supplied by
the twenty-five dynasties of China, with 230 reigns, covering a period of
4000 years. The chronology of the first three of these dynasties, from
B.C. 2205 to B.C. 206, is only conjectural, Chinese chronologists 2000
years ago not having much more precise guidance as to their own national
past than we have as to the age of the Ramessids. Only the first two or
three centuries of the period, however, are at all mythological, as the dates
assigned prove sufficiently, for seventy-nine reigns are made to extend only
over 1950 years, or on an average just under twenty-five years each ;
that is, four reigns to a century. From 255 B.C. to the present day,
Chinese chronology is as trustworthy as any other record preserved by

406 APPENDICES.
fallible humanity; and from 255 B.C. to 1875 A.D., 153 perfectly historical
emperors of China have reigned, upon an average fourteen years each, or
at the rate of seven to a century, while if we take the historical and the
partly legendary period together, the average will be reduced to six for a
century. If we take the ten kings of the Karnak tablet to represent the Thirteenth
Dynasty, and add them to the 176 names given above, we have 186 reigns
and interregnums of uncertain duration, of vvhich perhaps it is enough to
say that they are scarcely reconcilable with any lower estimate than the
minimum previously quoted of 3000 b.c. for the foundation of the
monarchy. Mr. Norman Lockyer's contributions to Egyptian chronology
are discussed in Appendix E, as, notwithstanding their intrinsic interest,
and the promise of further results to be reached by his method, it seems
doubtful whether any single date in the earlier dynasties is as yet
positively determined by astronomical evidence. The period of disorder
between the Twelfth and the Eighteenth Dynasties, during which the so-
called Hyksos kings reigned, has been very variously estimated, and the
native records count five dynasties during the interval; but here again the
Chinese Annals may be useful, as showing that such a period of convulsion
may be an affair of decades rather than centuries. Exactly five dynasties
(fifteen reigns) succeeded each other in the fifty-three years between the
great Chinese dynasties of Tang and Sung (907-960 a.d.). And Professor
Lieblein has recently shown grounds for believing that the Thirteenth
and the Eighteenth Dynasties are only separated by a period of this char
acter, as the monuments show Aa-hotep, the mother of the founder
of the Eighteenth Dynasty, to have been evidently a near relation of
Queen Sebekemsas, daughter of one of the last kings of the Thirteenth
Dynasty.1 Practically all the great kings, all who erected monuments, and all who
reigned for any length of time, are given in all the lists alike. Where
they differ, it is no doubt that some include more fully than others the
contemporary dynasties, usurpers and the rival or associated sovereigns
concerning whose claims there might be a difference of opinion amongst
truthful and well-informed historians. The table of Abydos, for instance,
omits the heretical semi-foreign kings who worshipped the sun's disk, and
reigned between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties ; and it is not
likely to have included any earlier rulers who were not recognised among
the legitimate ancestors of the reigning house. Thus the table of Abydos
gives the names of twenty kings belonging to the five obscure dynasties
between the Seventh and the Eleventh, but the fragments of the Turin
1 P.S.B.A. Ap. 1888 (vol. x. pp. 302-4). On a stele in the Gizeh Museum, Aah-
hotep is represented, with Queen Sebekemsas in the background embracing her. In
the text an official entrusted with various functions by Aah-hotep and her successor,
Aahmes, the royal wife of Amenhotep I., narrates how he had restored this tomb of the
Queen Sebekemsas, after it had fallen into decay, and it is quite incredible that such a
restoration should have been effected by a mere employee of a queen consort in honour of
a relationship as remote, let us say, as that between James I. and the Matilda of
Scotland who married Henry I.

APPENDICES. 407
papyrus relating to the same period seem to allow space for twice that
number. Chronological records are sure to become confused if events are dated
only by the years of the reigning king, while chroniclers trust to the
memoiy of living men for the length and order of the recent reigns.
Chinese history owes its clearness to the habit vvhich has been formed of
having contemporary chronicles of each dynasty kept officially, which are
edited and published by the next dynasty ; but unfortunately the historic
instinct had not reached such a pitch of disinterested strength as this in
Egypt, and we are thus driven back upon more or less plausible and cir
cumstantial conjecture.
Private deeds, relating to the ownership of houses,1 show us five genera
tions of professional singers succeeding each other in the course of seventy
years, or at the rate of six or seven in. a century. Several of the high
officers who tell the story of their career on their monuments, record how
they stood equally high in the favour of two, three, or even four succes
sive kings, and this occurs when the reigns are not of exceptionally brief
duration. The effect upon the average of a series of really short reigns
has never been sufficiently allowed for ; thus in the obscure period between
the Seventh and Eleventh Dynasties, four successive kings reigned nine
years four months and eleven days in all, or two years and four months
apiece. And in the face of this recorded fact, to restore the average of
three royal generations to a century, assumed by Brugsch after Herodotus,
we must suppose another group of four kings to have reigned 255 years,
or over sixty-three years apiece, which is clearly incredible.
There are many possible reasons for short reigns, a late accession, for
instance, conducing just as much as a short life to that result ; but though
a long life is essential to a long reign, the accidents which shorten reigns
may befall kings whose life might naturally be long, so that to a certain
extent the odds are against even the same average of longevity being
reached by reigning sovereigns as by the ministers or architects who enter
on their functions when of age to discharge them.
The first tvvo dynasties reigned at This; the Third, Fourth, and Sixth at
Memphis ; the Twelfth, Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth at Thebes.
The break in the monumental record between the Sixth and the Twelfth,
and between the Twelfth and the Eighteenth Dynasty, is exactly like what
would have occurred in China, between the fall of one and the rise of
another of the great dynasties, if the maintenance of the historical record
had been dependent on the wealth or enterprise of individual princes. It
is in accordance with human experience everywhere that, after a period of
national prosperity and greatness under able kings and ministers, the State
lives for a while upon the recollection and reputation of its first glory,
until a corresponding period of decay and degeneracy sets in, culminating
in political anarchy or revolution, which, in these comparatively isolated
ancient States, ends sooner or later in a restoration, and a further period
1 Revue Lgyptologique, I. p. 1 78.

408 APPENDICES.
of well-being. Ancient Egypt had three or four such epochs, but the
nature of the official records prevented the preservation of any contempo
rary accounts of the causes why dynasties fall, such as the method of
historiography in China makes peculiarly abundant in that country.
We hardly know enough of the history of the six dynasties which
constitute the Ancient Empire to judge if the prosperity of the country
under them was fairly continuous. The Twelfth Dynasty, which belongs
to the Middle Empire, certainly comes between two periods of feebleness
and disorder. But some of the seven Amenemhats and Usurtasens of this
dynasty must have had long as well as brilliant reigns, to judge from the
number and extent of both their conquests and their monuments. The
so-called Hyksos kings were anxious, though foreigners, to govern upon
the Egyptian model, and, like the Mongols in China, their rule was not a
mere tyranny : they had monuments erected in their own taste by Egyptian
artists, and the fact that these were deliberately defaced after their expul
sion is partly answerable for the scarcity of authentic information about
their reigns.
The Eighteenth Dynasty begins another period of Egyptian greatness,
under kings mostly bearing the names of Thothmes and Amenhotep, whose
dates are fixed within limits, by the fact of their correspondence with kings
of the Kassite Dynasty of Babylonia. The latter years of the dynasty were
discredited in the eyes of the orthodox by the king's adoption of foreign
forms of worship. The interval of disturbance was, however, neither
violent nor prolonged, and after the decline of the Eighteenth Dynasty
the princes of the Nineteenth succeeded to the empire which they were to
carry to its utmost limits.
Seti I., who has already been mentioned, in connection with the tablet
of Abydos, was the second king of this dynasty and the founder of its
greatness. His son, Rameses 1 1., whose popular name was Sestesu, is
the "Sethosis also called Ramesses " of Manetho and the Sesostris of the
Greeks. With him the seclusion of Egypt ended, and it is hardly too
much to say that his victorious armies on their homeward march showed the
way into Egypt to the coming generations of her conquerors. The Nine
teenth Dynasty was short-lived, and before its close a Phoenician usurper
apd other foreigners were in a position to levy tribute and banish or oppress
the native inhabitants. The land was freed by the father of Rameses III.,
himself the founder of the Twentieth Dynasty, whose appellation Ramessu-
pa-nuter — Rameses the god— is better known to us in the form Rhamp-
sinitus, given to it by Herodotus. He is the last of the great kings of
militant, independent Egypt, and the later Monarchy, or third period of
Egyptian history, is held to begin with his reign.
The Twenty-first Dynasty is founded by a usurper of priestly origin ; the
Twenty-second by a family whose names point to a Mesopotamian source;
the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth are of Ethiopian extraction ; and Psam-
meticus and his successors of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty committed the
final blunder of employing Greek mercenaries to repel their southern

APPENDICES. 409
foes. The fourth king of this dynasty, Uahabra, is the Greek Apries, the
Pharaoh Hophra of the Jews, and during this and the following reigns, the
wealth and material prosperity of Egypt was very likely at its height ; but
the political vitality of the State was already exhausted, and after the first
Persian conquest Egypt never again flourished as an independent Stale
under native rulers. She enjoyed some peace and prosperity under foreign
rulers more or less completely Egyptianised ; but the history of the decline
and fall of the venerable empire, if a Gibbon could be found to treat it,
would no doubt begin with the reigns of the later Ramessids of the
Twentieth Dynasty, each fresh race of conquerors, Assyrians, Ethiopians,
Persians, Greeks, and Romans, helping to complete the degradation of
the people and the disintegration of the ancient system of conservative
morality by which the priests or princes had made their rule acceptable.

APPENDIX B.
Vol. I., p. 145.
Egyptian Irrigation.
Upper Egypt is still mainly irrigated upon the ancient system of canals
and reservoirs or basins, described in the text ; its principles are well
understood by the native cultivators, who all turn out willingly to work
night and day, to guard against any danger of a breach in the walls during
high flood, or to raise the walls sufficiently to secure the necessary reserve,
when the Nile is abnormally low. When fairly worked, the traditional
method confers the utmost benefit on the soil with the minimum of human
labour; and the explanations given by modern engineers of the modus
operandi of old Father Nile, in the execution of his purpose to provide
corn in Egypt, rather heighten than diminish our estimate of his beneficent
wisdom. There are three elements in the Nile water vvhich contribute to make
its deposits into a manure of ideal completeness. The Blue Nile brings
a volcanic detritus from the Abyssinian highlands in great quantity ; the
Sambat, the waters of which are a milky white, contributes lime; while the
great swamp regions of the White Nile add the organic matter required.
Lake Victoria itself, the first chief reservoir in the chain, is about 1,120
metres above the sea level ; rain is almost perpetual in the surrounding
hills, but a natural barrage to regulate the downflow is provided by the
Sadds or dams of living vegetation vvhich stretch from Gondokoro to the
mouth of the Bahr el Gazel. The water above the Sambat is always green
and unwholesome ; and for two or three weeks between the 10th of June
and the 10th of July, when the green water from the sadds reaches Cairo,
the water of the river is undrinkable. Then the red muddy water, charged
with alluvium, from the Blue Nile and the Atbara begins to arrive; but
the danger of laying profane hands upon the ordinances of the River god
became strangely apparent between 1870 and 1880, when passages in the
swamp were kept open for navigation and the consequent loss of the
natural barrage resulted in alternations of the highest and the lowest floods
ever recorded.
The volume of the Nile at Khartoum and Cairo is about the same, so
that the Atbara and the springs in the valley together must make up for
the waste of water by evaporation and irrigation. Before swelling the
flood the Blue Nile has to saturate its own sandy bed and the desert. It

APPENDICES. 411
takes the flood thirteen days to come from Khartoum to Assouan, and six
from Assouan to Cairo ; telegraphic communication respecting the state of
the river at Khartoum is an indispensable condition to a thoroughly satis
factory regulation of the water supply, and consequently of the agriculture
of the country. High Nile in Lower Egypt is delayed about a month by
the filling the basins of Upper Egypt, where, if the canals are in order, it
is scarcely possible for the river to rise too much, though if the Nile stays
high too long, the crops suffer from worms and heat before harvest. The
filling of the basins begins ordinarily on the 12th of August, and ends in
the south by October 1, the water reaching the Nile by October 15. North
of the newly restored and completed barrages, the latter date is postponed
to the middle and end of November. If the flood is low, the water is,
where possible, dravvn from the upper basins to the lower ones to complete
their supply ; and an insufficient total water supply is economised and
made to serve the needs of a wider area by means of temporary banks,
erected so as to hold the water back at different levels, just long enough
to fill the canals without waste, as shown in the diagram. Half the water,
it is evident, suffices to water the valley, by the help of the banks, b, b, b.

Irrigated in this way, the soil of Egypt produces one rich crop year after
year, and the fellahin are almost at leisure, except during seed-time and
harvest, or during alarms of excessive or deficient flood, so that they are
at liberty to add to their slender resources by earning the wages paid,
since the abolition of the corvee, for the necessary work in keeping the
canals clear. This unproductive work is lessened when sluices on a large
enough scale are provided to let the water on the. lands where it is wanted,
without standing in the canals. And Upper Egypt seems at present to
require nothing more for its agricultural welfare than the provision of
additional reservoirs, that will allow the area of cultivated land to increase,
and solid works for the regulation of the high flood water ; with, it should
perhaps be added, a clear apprehension on the part of all officials of the
end in view, so that large canals should in no case be substituted for small
ones, till machinery had been provided which could be depended on to
work them as efficiently, in proportion, as the simple system to be super
seded. The story of the failure of Mehemet Ali's experiments in scientific irriga
tion might pass for an allegory on the dangers of a little knowledge,
especially when applied as a substitute for the traditional wisdom of
ancient custom and experience. The persons concerned in the working

412 APPENDICES.
of a machine, — whether it be an irrigation canal or the government of a
country, — if left absolutely to themselves, to consult their own convenience
as best they can, without the intrusion of external force or fallacy, will in
time hit upon a method of keeping the wheels revolving ; and this method
will work, as it is said, by rule of thumb, even if the formula of its working
remains unconstructed. But unless all possible disturbing forces have
been calculated and allowed for a priori, it is perfectly certain that new
methods intended to introduce an improvement at one point will disturb
some portions of the old mechanism, so as to induce new, and, as it were,
artificial evils, which again, dealt with individually, will introduce further
complications, and in practice, further dislocation of the original mechanism.
This is not an argument against elaborate machinery, but an argument for
instruction as complete and intelligence as cultivated as the machinery is
complex. And this is what her manifold controllers have not succeeded
in bestowing upon the sacred land of Nile.
Down to 1820, Lower Egypt was irrigated by a partial system of basins
for the low land, while cotton or maize were grown during flood upon the
highlands, drenched by the high floods occurring five or six times in a
century. Mehemet Ali cut a number of deep summer canals to discharge
the low level summer supply of the Nile so as to enable summer crops of
cotton to be obtained. The summer or sefi canals run twenty feet below
the general level of the country, and water has to be pumped from them,
so that the labour of cultivation is increased, and artificial manure is
required besides, the result being a general average of two crops a year.
The time when the flood water can be supplied is an important element in
the culture of different crops, and one motive for over-deep cuttings was
that the old shallow canals did not get it early enough for maize cultiva
tion. Mehemet strengthened the dykes which kept back the flood and
allowed the basin walls to fall into decay, so that vast tracts got only water,
without the fertilizing mud, at the very time when the soil was being ex
hausted by additional cropping ; while the dams built to hold back the
water during flood to the level of the country " converted the canals into a
series of pools which formed very efficient silt traps,"1 that had to be
cleared at an enormous expense of forced labour.
Nor was this all the damage done : notwithstanding the regulators, the
canals were so much too large during flood that the water sent down by
them drowned all the natural and artificial drainage outlets, reducing some
land to swamp and some to salt wastes. Ten thousand acres of the best
land in Egypt have been ruined in the last twenty years by salting.
Ismail's most practical work — the Ibrahima canal — damaged a large neigh
bouring tract by depriving it of the " red water '' of the natural flood,
while the money spent on it would have provided masonry regulators to
all the basins of Upper Egypt. It is calculated that the crops in Lower
Egypt are one-third more valuable than those of the upper country, but at
1 W. Willcocks, Egyptian Irrigation (1889), p. 96.

APPENDICES. 413
present neither the peasantry nor the treasury reap a reward proportionate
to the cost and labour imposed by these first ill-advised innovations.
The English engineers, who form the only really popular element in the
English occupation, have to wrestle with the double problem, of reclaiming
the land lost by faulty methods of irrigation, and extending the benefits of
the old and sound methods as widely as possible, as well as to meet the
continued demand for a system of summer canal irrigation which shall not
inflict permanent injury on the soil. By summer irrigation seventy to
eighty inches of water may be brought, in about twenty waterings in the
course of a year, to stand upon the soil ; this sinks over half a yard below
the surface and evaporates ; and as the Nile water is rich in salts, these
accumulate on the surface, unless crops are chosen to counteract the excess.
The land can also be preserved by winter washings if properly drained,
but drainage cuts are useless if above the level of the country, and the
carrying capacity of different subsoils has also to be tested in order to
calculate the drainage requirements. If regulators are provided, the same
canal can be used alternately to irrigate and drain, but then it has to be
large enough to give a double quantity of water in a fixed time.
The commonest method is to wash by cultivating summer rice, which
reclaims salt land ; but mud cannot come on till the salt has been washed
off bad land, and accordingly it must be a work of time to recover for use
the large tracts of low-lying lands in the Delta, at one time famous for
their fertility. Some of these surround the large salt lakes by the coast,
which formerly had more or larger openings that kept the water in them at
the level of the Mediterranean, and are swept during the winter by salt
water ; others are reclaimable swamp, and the rest is simply land destroyed
by bad systems of cultivation. Cuts for drainage and navigation, with em
bankments where necessary, will remedy the first evil. For swamps, drainage
cuts, pumping stations, and rice cultivation are prescribed ; while the best
way to reclaim deteriorating land is held to be to revert, every fourth or
fifth year, to the primitive system of basin irrigation, or else drain for
summer rice or wash for winter clover. Clover irrigated from winter canals
can be cut five times a year instead of three, and some estimate of the
possible fertility of the soil can be gathered from the fact that good land
on the Mahmoudia canal bank lets at ^12 an acre I
Really well-planned irrigation works nearly pay their expenses out of
the profits of a single year ; thus, the reparation and completion of the
barrages cost about half a million, and diminished at once the cost of clear
ing silt from the canals of the whole Delta by over ,£300,000. These
famous and often-mentioned works were designed by Mougel, a French
engineer, and begun in 1842, and consist of a vast barrier, below Cairo
just above the forking of the Damietta and Rosetta branches of the Nile.
They were completed in their present form in 1891, thirty years after their
first abandonment ; and a head of four metres of water was at once
secured. The achievement was pleasantly and appropriately celebrated,
on the appeal of Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff, by the bestowal of a pension

4i4 APPENDICES.
on Mougel, who was still living, and had been in no way to blame for the
scamped materials and work which rendered his design almost useless for
so many years. In general the record of the deeds of the foreigners in
Egypt, and their relations alike to the Egyptians and to each other, is such
that we have reason to be glad of the innumerable reasons which exclude
all mention of them from these pages. But there is one other incident,
also connected with the regulation of the waters, which is pretty enough,
and Egyptian enough, to deserve to be recorded on the walls of an
" eternal dwelling-place " when the hero of it rests in the fields of the Amenti
with the souls of the true and just, who, in the valley of the Nile, "have
not shown to the people the face of a crocodile." An important district
was threatened with a year's destitution by a low Nile ; the people, in their
distress, applied to a canal inspector, who hastened to the spot, and work
ing night and day, erected a temporary barrage, damming up a canal so as
to raise the water to the needful level and save the crops. The relief was
so great that a solemn service of thanksgiving was held, in the chief mosque
of the province, by the highest available dignitary of the national church.
And popular enthusiasm went so far that, not only was the infidelity of the
engineer, who had wrought the deliverance, forgotten and condoned, but
his presence at the service in the mosque was invited and insisted on.1
The return from any judicious expenditure on reservoirs and regulators
is so speedy, certain, and ample that some well-wishers to the Egyptians
join the chorus of speculators who would like to " develop " Egypt as an
investment for foreign capital. Foreigners of every nationality and every
creed have indulged for so many millenniums in the lucrative sport of spoil
ing the Egyptians, that it might seem a hopeless task to persuade an in
dustrial age to renew its faith in the wisdom of the victims. And yet,
if we apply the most modern standards of economic merit, what more
can be demanded of an agricultural country than to export food, and
maintain a large operative population in content ? And when, between
Amenhotep and Moncrieff, has Egypt come nearer to fulfilling this ideal,
than when she followed the ancient lights of her own wisdom under her
own Pharaohs?
By the help of sun and river, Egyptian industry and Frankish engineer
ing science may bring from the black soil even richer, more abundant and
precious crops than were won in ancient Egypt ; but unless the teachings
of history are wasted — as it were a sin they should be, in the land which
has done more than any other to teach the rest of the world to write and
read its history — these fruits of labour and industry will not be squandered
in subsidies to ignorant and irresponsible Compagnies anonymes, but will
serve a wise and independent government to minister to the welfare of its
people. Egypt does not need to borrow now except from her own tax
payers, upon whom her taxes should be spent— a renewal of ancient custom
vvhich, in a few years, could not but lead to the astounding and paradoxical
1 England in Egypt, Alfred Miliver (1892), p. 303.

APPENDICES. 415
phenomenon of a country deriving an income from national investments,
instead of paying — or failing to pay — a national debt.
Under whatever guidance Egypt succeeds in reaching this condition,
when it is reached " the confidence of the people in its rulers " will not
be lacking. Such confidence is based on the perception of acceptable
services ; and there must be something wanting in the wisdom of the most
well-meaning of rulers if the services they seek to render are not acceptable
to those under their rule. The foreigner in Egypt will not have justified
his existence till the epitaph of his raj is written by a grateful nation in
the ancient phase : " He entered praised and departs beloved."
Since the above lines were written, the lovers of ancient Egypt have
been agitated by the proposal of engineers to erect — at a total cost of five
or six millions sterling — a dam across the Nile, either at Kalabsha, about
thirty-one miles above Assouan ; at Philre, at the head of the Assouan
Cataract, which would have the effect of submerging the temple of Philae
for several months of the year ; or at Gebel Silsila, as an alternative to
the creation of a new Lake Moeris in the natural depression of the Fayum,
called the Wady Rayan.
All of these great undertakings are recommended with confidence as
certain to add to the national wealth and revenue, preference being ap
parently felt, on engineering grounds, for the most objectionable, archseo-
logically speaking, of the dams, as promising to give a constant water
supply to Upper as well as Lower and Middle Egypt. This is not the
place for an expression of opinion on so difficult and technical a question,
but there are one or two considerations deriving their chief force from the
history of the country, which, it may be permitted to hope, will receive due
consideration. In the first place, Egypt has suffered too much from outside interference
to be able to afford to try any but successful experiments. The system of
continuous irrigation in Lower Egypt cannot be claimed as a complete
success till the salt marshes of the Delta have been reclaimed ; and any
introduction of the same system in Upper Egypt, where for good or ill it
is as yet unknown, will be more secure against disaster if it is postponed,
until all its ill consequences have been obviated and its full advantages
secured in Lower Egypt. On the other hand, it is just possible that the
ancient Egyptians — who, in the days of Mena, executed irrigation works
which are still admired, and who used the vast reservoir of Lake Moeris
without impairing the fertility of the lowlands on the sea-shore — may have
had some good reason for preferring the system of basin irrigation in Upper
Egypt Any way, if, as has been stated, the object of the reservoir is to
enable fresh crops, such as sugar cane, to be introduced, the cultivation of
which requires a command of capital beyond the resources of the fellahin,
it is certain that the proposition is premature, since no increase in the
money value of the crops obtained could compensate the country for the
creation of a landless labouring class.

APPENDIX C.
Vol. I., pp. 184, 323.
Welsh Mortgages.
In describing the primitive antichretic lease as a sort of "Welsh Mortgage,"
there is the same kind of anachronism as in the use of the term vif-gage or
vivum vadium for the same purpose. In Colquhoun's Summary of the
Roman Civil Law, Sect. 1473, tne Pactum antichreticum is described as
" assigning the produce by way of interest to the pledgee, termed in
English a Welsh mortgage. The pactum antichreseos is taken to imply
in all cases of doubt a pignoratitian contract . . . which must not,
however, be made a means of obtaining usurious interest. An antichresis
tacita accrues to a creditor who has lent his debtor a capital sum without
interest, and permits him by implication to retain so much produce as will
represent the legal interest though no antichretic contract has expressly
intervened ; he must, moreover, return the object to the debtor on the ex
tinguishment of his claim, and if he should sell the pledge, hand over the
surplus which may remain over and above the amount of such claim."
The history of these conceptions in Roman Law does not concern us
now; though, if we are to suppose a pre-Hellenic origin for the obscure
legal usages of Tenos or Mylasa, it would appear possible that the similar
elements in later Roman Law might have been derived from earlier Italic
stocks. The two kinds of landed security recognised by the common law of
England were distinguished as mortuum vadium and vivum vadium. The
vivum vadium consisted of a feoffment to the creditor and his heirs until
he repaid the debt due to him out of the rents and profits of the estate.
The creditor took actual possession, received the rents and applied them
from time to time in liquidation of the debt, and the term for the trans
action was explained to signify that by it neither debt nor estate was lost.
When the debt was liquidated, the creditor could be ejected.
The ancient mortuum vadium1 seems to have resembled the Welsh
mortgage, the creditor and his heirs holding and receiving the rents with
out account until the principal of the debt was repaid, so that the estate
was unprofitable or " dead " to the mortgagor in the meantime ; but there
was this advantage to him, that the estate was never lost. There is no
1 Glanville, lib. 10, cap. 6: "Mortuum vadium dicitur illud cujus fructus vel red-
ditus interim percepti in nullo se acquietant."

APPENDICES. 417
trace of the period when this mode of mortgage fell into disuse; but the
change must have been effected between Glanville and Littleton, as the
latter only describes mortgages a degree nearer to the modern sort After
defining the mortuum vadium as a feoffment upon condition that if the
feoffor pay the money to the feoffee at a certain day, the feoffor may re
enter, he says (Sect. 332) it is called mortgage for that it is doubtful
whether the feoffor will pay, at the day limited, and if he doth not pay,
then the land is taken from him for ever and is dead to him upon condition,
etc., and if he doth pay, then the pledge is dead as to the tenant in mort
gage. To which Lord Coke adds the further reason that it is to distinguish
it from vivum vadium, so called because if one pledge an estate until the
pledgee have received the debt out of the profits of the land, neither
money nor land dieth and is lost1
Littleton's idea of a mortgage is that the land is pawned, and subject to
forfeiture if not redeemed at a given date ; while, as Mr. Fisher observes,
the mortuum vadium of Glanville and the vivum vadium of Coke seem
to be practically identical, and both correspond, more or less, with the
Welsh mortgage, and the pactum antichreseos of the Roman law. The
scanty development of both systems of pledging, in Plantagenet and
Tudor England, is due to the fact that land was not yet regarded as an
investment for capital. Services had not been systematically transmuted
into rent, and it was not a matter of course for the " fruits or rents " to be
worth so much that their accumulation would pay off a capital sum
borrowed. And at the same time, the distinction between the principal
and the interest of a debt, on which the distinction between the two kinds
of pledges turned, was not one of very prominent social importance, as
there were few alternative investments open to non-commercial capitalists.
The security known as a Welsh mortgage is in effect a conveyance of an
estate redeemable at any time on payment of the principal, with an under
standing that the profits in the meantime should be received by the
mortgagee, without account, in satisfaction of interest. It agrees with the
vivum vadium in respect that the estate of the debtor is never forfeited,
but differs in respect that the rents are applied in satisfaction of interest
only, not of the principal of the debt. In a Welsh mortgage no covenant
for the payment of the debt by the mortgagor is inserted in the mortgage
deed, and the mortgagee has no remedy to compel redemption or fore
closure in equity, though the mortgagor may redeem at any time.8
The disuse of the form of contract is probably due to this inequality,
which was not a difficulty in Babylonia or Malabar, because such mortgage
deeds circulated as negotiable property, and a man who wanted to realize
his capital could count on finding some one in want of an investment, will
ing to take his place as creditor. The theoretical advantage, " that the
estate was never lost," may also have been found rather illusory in feudal
England, when it was by no means certain that the repayment of a debt
1 Fisher on Mortgages (1884), p. 2.
2 Cooke's Treatise on the Law of Mortgage, 4th ed. (Mackeson), 1880, pp. 5, 6.
VOL. II. — P.C. E E

4i 8 APPENDICES.
would induce the creditor in possession to allow the former owner to re
enter. This difficulty occurred in the earliest example, quoted by Fisher,
of a security "resembling the ancient mortuum vadium, and possibly
derived from the pactum antichreseos," from an Anglo-Saxon deed of the
ioth century. " It appears from the document that the land was delivered
by Sigelm, the father of Eadgifa, queen of Eadward the Elder, in pledge
f°r ^o3° t0 Goda, who held it for seven years. Sigelm having paid off the
debt and bequeathed the land to Eadgifa was afterwards slain in battle,
and Goda then denied having received the money and for six years with
held the land. Eadgifa purged her father by oath as to the payment, but
could not recover the land without the interference of the reigning king,
and after being again despoiled of it and a second time regaining it, she
bestowed it upon the Church." Assuming the authenticity of this docu
ment, Mr. Fisher proceeds : " It shows that possession of the land was
delivered and that the right of redemption was admitted after seven years;
and it seems to be implied that no reduction of the debt had taken place
by reason of the mortgagee's possession." 1
In Domesday also the mention of lands in mortgage seems to imply the
possession of the mortgagee, so that it almost seems as if, in England,
before and down to the time of Glanville, the possession of the mortgagee
was incidental to the security. We have seen how Roman law tended to
limit the indefinite power of the owner to redeem in Syria,3 and how the
prohibition of usury in the Koran was supposed to apply to the ancient
Kabyle contracts called rahnia.3 And it seems that in Europe the Civil
and Ecclesiastical law together set themselves to abolish the same kind of
custom ; which must have been the more widespread and deeply rooted to
excite so much hostility.
Fisher quotes the following passage from Lauriere's work on the Coutumes
de Paris. " When creditors, intimidated by ecclesiastical censures, took
lands in pledge, with an agreement that the profits should reduce the
principal, this pledge was called vifi because, as our old practitioners say, it
discharged itself by its own produce, which was very just and lawfuL
But when the creditor took or received the profits in pure gain to himself
and in pure loss to the unhappy debtor, it was called mortgage or gage-
mort, because it did not discharge or free itself." We see how entirely
the working of any contract depends on the circumstances of the parties
to it by the epithets used here. In Babylonia or Malabar the debtor in
such a case is by no means necessarily " unhappy," or the contract usurious ;
it all depends on the value to the mortgagor of the right to redeem, and
on how far the amount of the loan approximates to the full value of the
land, less that right
In France these mortgages were only held to be justifiable in two cases :
" as when a father, marrying his daughter, and giving her a portion, which
1 The Law of Mortgage and other Securities ttpon Property. W. R.Fisher 4th ed.,
1884, pp. 2, 3.
2 Ante, vol. i. p. 490. 3 Ik< pp ,g6) ^

APPENDICES. 419
he was unable to pay in ready money, gave an estate in pledge to his son-
in-law, to receive the rents till the portion should be paid ; or a vassal
borrowed money of his feudal lord (the very opposite of the typical Malabar
arrangement), and give his fief in pledge ; because, as the lord, as long as
the pledge lasted, lost the services of his vassal, it was right he should be
indemnified by having the profits of the pledged fief." Except in these cases,
theologians and casuists denounced the antichretic contracts as fictitious
and usurious. " These fictitious contracts were much used in the Customs
of Anjou, Maine, Touraine and the Loudunois, where they are still known
under the name of pignoratifs ; but the court has always held them to be
illegal, and has forbidden their use." The local custom in the districts
named evidently approached to the old English and Welsh mortgage,
which died out before feudal custom and Rome-derived law. And the Code
Napoleon now only recognises under the name of antichrese an agreement
by which the mortgagee accounts for all receipts and expenditure, and is
entitled to hold the land pledged to him, till the balance in his favour has
paid off both interest and principal of the original loan.
In England there does not seem to have been any speculative hostility
towards Welsh mortgages in the judicial mind ; and Fisher lays down the
law concerning them accordingly. " Being without condition, there can
be no forfeiture, and consequently there is no equity of redemption which
can be the subject of foreclosure ; but there is a continuing right of re
demption, every receipt of rent being under the contract a receipt of so
much interest"
Among English reported cases there are scarcely over half a dozen that
deal with the so-called Welsh mortgage, which has gradually dropped
altogether out of the ordinary law books. In the case of Orde v. Heming,1
in 1686, "The bill was to redeem a mortgage, and the defendant demurred
by reason that of the plaintiff's own showing the mortgage was 60 years
old." The demurrer was overruled, because it was charged in the bill
that the mortgagor agreed the mortgagee should enter and hold, till he
was satisfied, which is in the nature of a Welsh mortgage, and in such case
the length of time is no objection. In 1714, however, Lord Chancellor
Cowper held that a rent charge granted over sixty years ago was not re
deemable " at so great a distance of time," and that the Court had hereto
fore gone too far in permitting redemptions.3
In one case,3 heard in 1742, we have a curious parallel to the mortgage
tolerated in France, viz. houses devised to a daughter subject to Redemption
at a specified amount : it was observed incidentally that " in common
Welsh mortgages on tendering principal and interest they may come into
this court for redemption at any time." And in another the analogy of
Welsh mortgages and " most copyhold mortgages is quoted " 4 in defence of
the decision to allow redemption against the heirs of a money-lender, who
bought from a young spendthrift an annuity of ,£150 for ,£1050, under a
1 1. Vemon, 418. 2 1. P. Williams, Chancery Cases, 271.
8 2. Atkyns, 363. 4 3. Atkyns, 280.

420 APPENDICES.
covenant, however, that the borrower might buy back the annuity for the
same sum on giving six months' notice and an extra payment of ^75.
In 1 7 15 we meet for once with a real Welsh mortgage.1 One Davids made
a mortgage of lands in Wales by way of lease and release in consideration
of ^300, with proviso that if he, his heirs or assigns, should on Michael
mas Day, 1702, or any Michaelmas Day following, pay to mortgagee, his
heirs or assigns, ,£300, and all arrears of rent and interest, the conveyance
should cease. It was said to be a common practice in Wales to make
mortgages in this manner, with design, " from their pride," to keep the
estate for ever in their own family. In this case apparently the interest or
rent was paid, and the point at issue was the application of dower money,
etc., to pay off the mortgage.
Courts of Equity tended to bring mortgages with right of redemption
under the Statute of Limitations, and refused relief after twenty years,
unless under special circumstances. But a special contract, in which an
agreement "like a Welsh mortgage" had been made,2 was allowed to stand
because in a Welsh mortgage there " is a perpetual power of redemption
subsisting for ever, and the mortgagee cannot compel redemption or fore
closure." In this case there was a grant of annuities in discharge of a
debt reserving a power to re-purchase and redeem the annuities. It was
held part of the personal estate of the grantee, and similar to the case of
Welsh mortgages, Lord Cowper holding that there is no power in mort
gagee to compel mortgagor to redeem or foreclose, " the contract being of
a different nature."
The most interesting contribution to the history of the institution within
the United Kingdom no doubt lies concealed among the Irish Law Tracts
concerning " the Law of Loans, Pledges, Accommodations and Securities,"
which still remain unpublished, though their interesting nature was in
sisted on as long ago as 1857. 3 I have not been able to obtain any
information as to the provisions of these laws, though the above description
of them is sufficiently significant. In Hartpole v. Walsh,4 it was said that
the Welsh mortgage was formerly a common form of mortgage in Ireland,
and the case reported 5 of a lease granted as security for a loan shows
clearly that the possibilities of the institution had been fully realized in that
country. Morony owed O'Dea ^200, and in 1784, wishing for a further
loan, as a security for both interest and principal, he executed a lease of
lands (38 acres) for twenty-one years at i2.r. an acre. O'Dea entered into
possession, and set off the rent against the interest, down to Midsummer,
17973 wnen the accounts were settled. Upon a further advance of money
by way of loan at that time (just as in Malabar), an additional term of
twenty years was granted at the same rent as in 1784, but there was an en-
1 Howell v. Price. Chancery Precedents (1689-1722), 423, 477.
2 Longuet v. Scawen, per Ld. Hardwicke. 1. Vesey Senr., 405.
3 Ancient Laws of Ireland, ii. p. 28.
* The reference in Fisher, which I have been unable to verify, is 5 Bro., P.C. 275.
0 Morony v. O'Dea. 1. Ball and Beatty (Ir.), 109.

APPENDICES. 42 1
dorsement on the lease saying it should be null and void when the sum of
^400 was paid.
O'Dea admitted that the original lease was granted merely to secure the
repayment of the money advanced by him, and stated that he entered into
possession as mortgagee, the stipulated rent representing the full value of
the lands. Morony claimed that he should account, as mortgagee in
possession, for profits in excess of rent paid, '' which was at undervalue,
and ought not to be binding on him." Evidence was offered that in 1784,
12s. was a fair value, and the Lord Chancellor held any way that the
mortgagor, having acquiesced in the payment for nineteen years, could not
now raise the point of undervalue. " This in substance is like a Welsh
mortgage wanting Form, and a party complaining (between 1803 and 1809)
of transactions in 1784 ought to have come here much sooner."
Lord Redesdale had held in a previous suit that "if the under leases
were made bona fide, the account must be taken at the rent reserved;"
but if they were at undervalue, which he considered fraudulent, " the ac
count must be at the full value of the lands." Morony's counsel argue
that the transaction being called a mortgage makes no difference, and
that the agreement is usurious if the rent is at less than the full value of
the lands. " Considering this Transaction either as a Lease granted in
consideration of a Loan of money, or as an agreement in the nature of a
mortgage, the Account ought to be taken at the full value of the Lands,
otherwise it would be a great Inlet to Fraud, and make a most dangerous
Precedent, that a Mortgagee should be suffered to avail himself of any
Agreement to avoid accounting at the full value." Finally, the Lord
Chancellor feels himself bound by previous decisions of the Court to de
clare " that a Lease granted in Consideration of a Loan of money cannot,
on principles of Public Policy, be supported."
An agreement that a mortgagee shall enter into possession of lands of the
mortgagor at a fair rent, in discharge of the debt — to which Lord Redes
dale, in another case,1 had objected — cannot (the Lord Chancellor held)
be against public policy or work a private injury ; and is therefore an excep
tion to the rule that a mortgagee in possession must account for the full
value of the lands. The lease of 1784 was therefore upheld, but that of
1787, "which on the face of it is an undervalue," was held to be imposed
by the undue influence of the creditor, and O'Dea was therefore required
from that date to account in full for rents and profits received, which were
to be set against interest and principal, and the balance struck, the mort
gagee being deprived of his costs on the ground of the fraudulent nature of
the 1797 agreement.
The counsel arguing before Lord Redesdale say " that though the rule
collected from the Statute of Usury ' that no advantage, directly or in
directly, above legal interest should be gained,' yet it might be carried too
far if applied to every case of a lease granted at the same time that a loan
of money was obtained." While the Lord Chancellor comments : " It
1 Browne 1. O'Dea. 1. Sch. and Lef. 115.

422 APPENDICES.
would perhaps be a good rule to be generally observed, that a transaction
of this kind (the renewal of a lease for a longer term at the same rent or
with additional advantages) is not to make part of a transaction respecting
the loan of money, because the person borrowing under such circumstances
is not a free agent." Similarly in another case1 Lord Redesdale says : " I
never can suffer the loan of money to be any inducement in a transaction
of this kind : I do not mean advancing money by way of fine or the like,
but when it is a distinct loan of money to a distressed man, for which
security is to be taken and he is still to continue a debtor for it" "It is
against public policy that those who make profit on their money without
hazard, should have as large a profit as those who employ it in trade and
manufactures, which are hazardous undertakings.'' The upshot being that
the leases granted (by a spendthrift to a speculative, money-lending brother-
in-law) are cancelled.
In yet another Irish case3 the plaintiff, who was then very much pressed
for money, '' declared he would not grant a lease to any person who would
not accommodate hi in with a sum of money." The lease was set aside,
But an under lessee bona fide and not concerned in the transaction of the
loan remained undisturbed.
The Irish courts seem to have had a latent conviction that freedom of
contract between landlord and tenant or between debtor and creditor was
in the nature of things impossible. If the capitalist dictated the terms
upon which he would lease the lands, the agreement was void because the
power of the purse was irresistible ; and even if the landowner insisted upon
a money advance in consideration of the lease, it was void also, as still
tending to his own impoverishment. Where such agreements stand unim-
peached, we find either that the two parties are — as a matter of fact —
equally matched, like the trader and the agriculturist in Babylonia, or that
the political superiority of the one (like the Nair landlord) counterbalances
the financial superiority of the other (e.g. the Mapilla tenant). The usuri
ous tenant creditor of the O'Dea type only takes possession in order to
sub-let at an advance, not to cultivate himself.
A lease granted at the time of a loan, containing a clause empowering
the tenant to retain a portion of the yearly rent till the money was repaid,
(without interest) was not upset.3 The precedent quoted was a case where
the defendant was indicted for usury in taking more than legal interest
by getting a beneficial lease. Hale (C. J.), before whom it was tried, said,
" that if any other security for the payment of the money had been taken,
or that by any collateral agreement it were to be repaid, and all this a con
trivance to avoid the statute, it would be usury." Cases of this sort had
practically ceased to come before the English courts, while still frequent in
Ireland; where also we meet with an example of a loan in the form of an
advance of rent* The amount of two years' rent was paid down and a
1 Drew v. Power, i. Sch. and Lef. 182.
2 Molloy v. Irwin. 1. Sch. and Lef. 310.
3 Prior v. Dumphy. 1. Ball and Beatty, 27.
4 Wilton v. Browne. Ib., 125.

APPENDICES. 423
lease granted for two years at 5^. a year, and then another lease for 41 years
at the rent contemplated in the advance (i.e. ^275), the interest of the first
advance to be deducted from the first gale of rent under the second lease.
Lord Chancellor Manners said, " The Doctrine of lease and loan appears
to me to have been carried far enough." This is not a lease in considera
tion of a loan ; it is but " an advance of rent by way of fine or foregift," and
therefore to be upheld.
It is earnestly to be wished that the interrupted translation of the Irish
laws may be resumed, and we should then perhaps get a clue as to the steps
by which the Malabar lease in consideration of a loan developed out of the
pure Babylonian antichresis.1 Meanwhile, the persistency of so strongly
specialized an institution within narrow and definite limits certainly gives a
presumption in favour of its having spread along with men of a particular
stock or race. And from this point of view the Welsh mortgage and the
Irish lease in consideration of a loan may be taken as an argument for the
importance of an Iberian or other equally archaic element in the popula
tion of the British Isles.
I am indebted to the kindness of Sir Charles Elton for nearly all the
above references.
1 It is perhaps a question whether the taurerec or small subsidy, called in the case of
inferior tenants raith or wages, given by the superior to his dependant, had anything to
do with the habit of regarding loans and leases as exchangeable values. But there is at
least nothing paradoxical in the somewhat strange attempt to interpret Chinese antiquities
by Irish analogies, when, in addition to minor parallels, we find the same faith in the
vicarious efficacy of royal virtue in both countries. "It was the belief of the ancient
Irish that when a good and just king ruled, crops were plentiful, cattle were fruitful, the
water abounded with fish, and the fruit trees had to be propped owing to the weight of
their produce. Under bad kings it was all the reverse." (Joyce, Short History of
Ireland, p. 64.)

APPENDIX D.
Vol. I., p. 259.
Babylonian Dynasties and Reigns.
The names, dates, and order of the kings of Babylon are being con
stantly added to and revised, so that any chronological summary is liable
to become antiquated even while it is being printed. But when only
approximate accuracy is required, or attainable, a table of names and
dates, which the reader will understand to be purely tentative and pro
visional, is the most convenient for reference, and may serve instead of an
historical summary to those who are not specially interested in the history
of Mesopotamia. The basis of the table is derived from the great lists,
called A and B (ante, p. 258), of Babylonian kings, supplemented from
other sources as they become available, and with round numbers substituted
for those suggested in different detailed attempts at a chronological re
construction. First Dynasty of Babel.

King
Sumu-abiSumula-iluZabu

Reigned

About

years.

B.C.

15 ...

2400

35 •••

23§5

(his son) 14

Apil-sin „ 1
Sinmuballit

3°

Chammuragash ,, 55

235°
2336
2318

Samsi-iluna

33

35 •

• 2233

Ibishum

33

25 •

. 2198

Ammiditana

33

25 -

¦ 2173

Ammizadugga

21

. 2148

Samsuditana

33

3i •

2127

j Builder of a temple, restored by Sa-
I gasaltias, and again by Nabonidus.

2282

Otherwise Hammurabi, who joined
Chaldaea to Kardunias (Baby
lon), and succeeded the Elamite
dynasty of Larsa.
Invasion of Chaldaea by Kudurnan-
chundi.

Total, Eleven kings of Babel reigning 304 years.

APPENDfCES.

425

Second Dynasty of Sisku.

One syllable or other of nearly all
these names is missing, and sup
plied conjecturally.
The earliest known rulers of Assyria,
the patesi Samsi-ramman, son of
Belkap-kapu, mentioned by Ram-
man-nirari III., and Samsi-ram
man, son of Ismidagon, mentioned
by Tiglath-pileser I. as preceding
him by 700 years, will belong to
this period.
Belbani, son of Adasi, king of As
syria, is mentioned by Esarhaddon
as an ancestor, and may have
flourished towards the end of this
dynasty, when the Assyrian princes
probably asserted their independ
ence.
Total, Eleven kings of the dynasty of Sisku reigning 368 years.1

King

Reigned

About

years.

B.C.

Anma-an

61

2100

Ki-annibi

55

• • 2039

Damki-ilanisu

36

- 1983

Iskibal

!5

.. 1948

Shu-ush-shi (his

brother)

27

• J933

Gulkisar

55

1906

Kirgalbar (his son)

5°

. 1851

Adarrakalamma

(his son)
38
1801
Akarulanna
26
- 1773
Milamkurkuraa
6
.. 1746
I-agamil
9
•- 1741
Third Kassite Dynasty.
King
KandishAgum-amir (his son)
Agu-ashiUsh-shiAdumilikUrzigurubarAgukakrime
Reigned years. 16 .
22
22 8
About B.C.
1730 171616941671
One inscription of this king exists.
?i6oo Left important inscriptions.
After this the order of the reigns becomes uncertain, the relative position
of only half a dozen or so together being agreed upon. Some of the
blanks may perhaps be filled in by the following names, contained in the
bi-lingual list of royal names : Ulam-buriash, Kara-bil, Ulam-charbi, Mili-
chali, Mili-shibarru, Mili-sach, Nimgirabi, Nimgirabi-sach, Nimgirabi-
buriash, Kara-sach, Nazi-shishu and Nazi-buriash ; but this is only a con
jecture. The three following columns give the names and dates in the
order suggested respectively by Hommel, Winckler, and Hilprecht, the
latter of whom has not given all the grounds for his suggestions, which
therefore do not appear more convincing that those of his predecessors.
1 The following are the names of five kings and a queen who may have reigned towards
the beginning of the Second Dynasty : Urdamu, Babbaruru, Urlugala, Urbabbar, Lugal-
girinna (or Sargon), and Azag-bau, the queen.
426

APPENDICES.

Hommel (p. 170) leaves the following kings unplaced : —

King

Reigned years.

About B.C.

Called the "unequalled" by a dis
tant descendant, and said by
Burnaburias II. to have received
presents of gold from an Egyptian
king (Thothmes III.) (b.c. 1503-
1449, Records, N.S. vi. p. 148).

Kurigalzu I.
Simash-shishu
Ulam-buriash Nazi-Maraddash Mili-shishu
Burnaburias I.
Kara-inlil
Sharbi-shishu (his son)
After these the order of six reigns is clear from the Tell-el-Amarna letters
and other sources.

King
Karaindas

Reigned years.

Burnaburias (?) II.
(his son)

Kara-chardasNazi-bugash Kurigalzu the Less
Nazi-maraddash II. (?

Karaburias

22

• 1319

Irba-marduk

26 .

• 1297

# * *

17 •

1271

Kara 

2

• "54

Gishammi (?)

(Kudur-bel ?)

6 .

• 1252

About B.C. ( Treats with Assyrian king Assur-bil-
1470 j nishe-shu, and corresponds with
^ Amenophis III.
^Treats with Assyrian Busurusur, and
I corresponds with Amenhotep IV.
\So does " Assur-yubalidh," king
of Assyria, mentioning his father
Assur-nadin-ahi.1
The son of the daughter of the
Assyrian king, Assuruballit, re
volted against and slew his pre
decessor.
( Contemporary of Assyrian king
I39° "| Bilnirari, son of Assuruballit.
f" Contemporary of Assyrian king
135° •< Ramman-nirari, whose inscription
(- survives.
f Contemporary of Shalmaneser I.; a
1 seal of latter's son, Tiglat-adar,
*- carried off to Babylon.
Seti I. and Rameses II. (b.c. 1348-
1281) receive tribute from most
countries west of the Euphrates.

1 No. 4 of the Tell-e!-Amarna Tablets in the Gizeh Museun

APPENDICES.

427

Reigned years. '3 •
8 .

'2

King
Shagasaltiash Bil-til  (his son)
BilnadinshumiKara(?)charbi Ramman-nadin- shumi
Ramman-nadin-ahi Mili-shishu

Marduk-apal-iddin 1 3

About B.C.

. (An inscription of his, 700 years old,
) found by Nabonidus.

1225
1224

( Defeated his Assyrian contemporary
^ Belkudurosor and Nindarpileser.
1186 i A grant of land by him contains re-
1 1 7 1 -j ferences to the " unequalled "
' Kurigalzu and Irba-marduk.

(At war with Assurdanan, king of
5 I Assyria.

Zamam-shuma-iddin 1
Bill-shuma-(iddin ?) 3 ... 1157
Total, 36 kings of Kossaean (?) dynasty reigning 376 years,

The lists of Winckler and Hilprecht follow in parallel columns.

King ReiSned
" years.

About .,. Reigned
B.C. "» years.

About B.C.

Gandis

15

172 9- 1713 Ramman-mushesi

1442

A M

Kallima(?)sin

1422

Gujashi

Kudur-turgu

•• 1407

Ushshi

Shagashalti-

Adu-metash
buriash
•• 1392
Tashi-gurumasl
1
Kurigalzu L, son
* # *
of Kadashman-
Karaindas
kharbe
¦• 1372
El?...
Kara-indash
Kurigalzu I.
ri'his elder son)
•• 1347
Burnaburias
Burnaburiash (? his
Karachardash
younger son)
•• 1342
Nazibugash
Kara-khardash, son
Kurigalzu II.
of Kara-indash
i3!7
* * *
Nazibugash
¦¦ i3°7
* * *
6
Kurigalzu II. , son
Shagashal...
13
of Burnaburiash
1306
Kashbe
Nazi-maruttash,
(? his son)
8
his son
.. 1284
Belshumiddin
4
Khadashman-turgu,
Karacharbe
4
his son
¦• 1257
Ramman-shum
Kadashman-buriash,
iddin
6
his son
1240
428

APPENDICES.

Reigned About
years. B.C.
Ramman-shum-

King

usur

3°

King
Isamme  ti
Shagashalti- shuriash
Bibi-iashu, his son
Bel-shum-iddina I.
Khadashman- kharbe
Ramman-shum- iddina
Ramman-shum-

Reigned years.

About B.C.
1238

1232
1219
1210 1209 1207

Mil-shikku, his
son
Marduk-abal- iddina, his
son
Zamam-shum- iddina
Bel-shum- iddina II.

15

13

1171

1156

1 143

3 1142-1140
In the last list the date of Kurigalzu is too late to agree with his
Egyptian correspondent ; but as fresh names are added to the lists, fresh
clues as to the order of the kings are discovered also, and there are so
many cases in which the lists give the duration of a reign without any
other particulars, that the chronology would be much more complete than
that of Egypt, if only the names and order were completed.

Fourth Dynasty of Pasi.

King
Marduk.

Reigned
years. 17 ¦
* * * 5
Nabuchodorosor I.
Belnadinaplu Marduk-nadin-ahi ? 22

Marduk  i\
Marduksapikullat 13

About B.C.
1150
H33

(
1127
1XI3 ¦{
11051 103

At war with Assurisi, king of
Assyria, grandson of Assurdanan.
According to Senacherib, carried
off Assyrian gods to Babylon.
Defeated by Tiglath-pileser, son
of Assurisi, the first great con
quering Assyrian king.
Made peace with Assurbelkala, son
of Tiglath-pileser.

APPENDICES.

429

Tfincr Reigned About
years. B.C.

SWas made king by a revolution, and
married the daughter of Assurbel-
kala, who is succeeded by his
brother, Samsi-ramman III.
Marduk-zer 
Nabu-shum 
Total, Eleven kings of the dynasty of Pasi reigning 72^ years.

Fifth Dynasty of Babylon.
„¦ ff Reigned About
n» years. B.C.
„. , , • , , N 0 0f Member of a southern dynasty " of
Sim-mash-shi-(chu) 18 ... 1080 < , , , J '
L Damik-marduk.
months.
Iamu-kin-sumi 5 ... 1062 A " son of Hasmar."
„ ,. , . , ( The Babylonian chronicle makes
Kassu-nadin-ahi 3 ... 1062 ; . '
( him reign 6 years.
Total, Three kings of the Sea Country reigning 21 years and 6 months.

Sixth Dynasty of Bazi.

King

Reigned About
years.
Iulbar-shakin-shumi 17 ... 1060 A " son of Bazi."
Nindar-kudorosor 3 ... 1043
months.
Amil-shukamuna 3 ... 1040
Total, Three kings of the dynasty of the House of Bazi reigning
20 years and 3 months.

Seventh Dynasty.

» vpars. B

Reigned About
years.

An Elamite 6 1040

43° King
* * *
* # #
* * *

APPENDICES.
Eighth Dynasty of Babel.

Reigned years. 13
months, days.
6 12

About B.C.
1040

Samas-mudammikNabu-sumiskun
* * *
Nabu-pal-iddin Marduk-nadin-sum (his son)
Marduk-belusati (his brother)
Marduk-balat-suikbi
? Bau-ahi-iddin
* * *

years.
?3i

900

879

(Kingdom of Israel founded.)
Assur-nadin-ahi, king of Assyria.
Tiglath-pileser II., king of Assyria.
Shishak, king of Egypt, founded
22nd Dynasty, and invaded Israel,
circ. 920.
Assurdanan II., king of Assyria.
( Defeated by Ramman-nirari II. of
| Assyria, 911.
/ Defeated by Ramman-nirari II. of
/ Assyria, 911, who is succeeded by
( Tuklet-adar, 910,
( and he by Assur-nasir-pal, author
\ of inscriptions, 883.
t Made treaties with Shalmaneser IL,
-J 860, who assists Marduk-nadin-
( sum against his rival.

853

Who revolted.
c Contemporary of Samsi-ramman,
812 ] whose 4th campaign, 825, was
(. against him.
( Deposed by Ramman-nirari, 812-
before 785 \ 7g3

Total, Thirteen (or Thirty-one) kings of unknown dynasty reigning
-*¦ ^- -j-
T * years.
Ninth Dynasty of Babel.
(At this point the Babylonian list of kings and the data of the Babylonian
chronicle begin, and can be compared with the Ptolemaic canon.)
Reigned About
years. B. c.
762 Assur-nirari, king of Assyria 753
747 Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria 745

King
Nabu-shum  15
Nabonassar 14
Nabu-nadin-ziri (his
son) 2
month, days.
Nabu-shum-ukin 1 12
Total, Four kings of the dynasty of Babel reigning 3 1 years.

733)

f Killed in an insurrection.

APPENDICES.

43i

King ReiSned
" years.
Ukinzir, of the house
of Shashi 3
Pulu became king of
Babylon 2
Ululai, of the house
of Tinu 5
Merodach Baladan, of
the Sea Dynasty 1 2

Sargon (of Assyria)

Senacherib, of the
house of Habigal 2
months.
Marduk-zakir-shumi 1
Merodach-baladan 6
years.
Bil-ipush, dynasty of
Babel 3
Assur-nadin-sum, dynasty of Habigal 6
Nirgal-ushizib 1
Mushizib-marduk, dynasty of Babel 4
Senacherib, king of
Assyria 8
Esarhaddon 13

Samas-sum-ukin, king
of Babylon 20
Kandal (Assurbanipal) 22
Nabopolassar 2 1

About B.C.

731 under his personal name,

72S 726 I
721 I

709

and was succeeded by
called Shalmaneser IV. by the
Assyrians.
Contemporary of Sargon, king of
Assyria.
Murdered and succeeded by Se
nacherib, whose authority was
not long recognised in Babylon ;
but he was able afterwards, 705,
to appoint one of his sons to be
viceroy there, who fell into the
hands of an Elamite foe. Ulti
mately Sennacherib recovered the
throne for himself, 688.

704

Nebuchadnezzar

43

702699693 692 c reigned over Babylon and Assyria,
688 { and was succeeded by his sons,
681 and Assurbanipal, king of Assyria,
668, who was succeeded in
Assyria by his sons, Belsumiskun
and Assur-itilani, under whom
Babylon revolted, 626.
668647625 r Contemporary of Sinsar-iskun ? the
\ Sarakus of Berosus, and last king
•> j of Assyria, under whom Nineveh
( fell, 606.

432

APPENDICES.

King
Evil-Merodach

Reigned years. 2

About B.C.
. 562

Neriglissar

4 •¦
months.

• 56°

Labashi-marduk

9 ¦¦

• 556

Nabonidus

years. 17 ...

¦ 555

Belsazar (his son)

539

555 Taken prisoner by Cyrus, 539.
f Cyrus welcomed by the people
( Babylon .

Twenty-two kings of different Houses reigning 194 years.

APPENDIX E.
Vol. i., p. 337.
Metric Systems of Babylonia and Egypt.
One of the first discoveries arising from the excavations of Telloh was
that the Babylonian and Egyptian foot rule were on the same scale. A
statue of Gudea bears upon its knee a graduated cubit measure 1 which
was conclusive on the subject. Numismatists and metrologists before this
time had been haunted by recurring resemblances between the coins and
measures of the West and some common standard, from whence it
seemed that they must all be traced, while yet it did not accord with the
established views of ancient history to suppose a direct borrowing in such
important matters from either Egypt or Babylonia. Still less would it
have occurred to any one to imagine that the weights, coins, and measures
of the old world were all derived from a unit, fixed in the highly artificial
and scientific way adopted by the French savants who, in 1799, elaborated
the modern metric system. They took as their standard (a kilogramme)
the weight, in vacuo, of a cubic decimetre of distilled water, and the cor
responding unit of length was supplied by that of one side of the cube, the
length of the metre having been previously fixed by an astronomical
standard. Brandis pointed out, nearly a generation ago, that the weight of the
Babylonian cubic foot of water was identical with that of the Babylonian
talent ; 2 and valuable papers by Dr. Brugsch have now 3 shown it to be
possible that the French men of science were forestalled in the use of their
method by the Babylonian and Egyptian originators of the system bor
rowed by the Greeks and Romans.*
1 Mr. Flinders Petrie gives its exact length at 20>$j inches.
2 Das Miinz- Mass- und Gewichts-vnescn in Vorder Asicn, bis auf Alexander der
Grossen. J. Brandis, 1866, p. 37.
3 Zeitschrift f. JEg. Sprache u. Altherthumskunde. May and Sept., 1889. Die Lbsung
der altagyplischen Miinzfrage.
4 Mr. Ridgeway, in his recent instructive work, The Origin of Metallic Currency and
Weight Standards, objects u. priori to the possibility of a primitive people using so
elaborate and scientific a method. But we must remember that it is easier, if less
scientific, to measure than to weigh ; and the use of rectangular water tanks would make
it easy to take the surface measure of a receptacle the cnpacity of which had been ascer
tained by filling. He himself points out that in Homer vessels of silver are valued, not
by weight but by size, according to what they will hold. The use of seed or grain, to
determine the smallest weights, is that they lend themselves to division, either for weigh
ing or measuring, so that any desired fraction of the larger weights, previously fixed, can
be ascertained and expressed in grains. Hultsch's view, that the longer measure answer
ing to the Greek stadium was first fixed by the distance a man traversed during the
space of two minutes, or the length of one diameter on the sun's path, does not neces
sarily exclude the other method for connecting the weight and length standards.
VOL. II. — P C. ™ I' F

434

APPENDICES.

The cubic root of any number, giving the weight in grammes of a cube
of liquid, will give the linear measure ; and so, if the standard of weight is
known, that of length can be inferred. The Roman amphora, for in
stance, was required to weigh 80 lbs. = 26,196 grs.; but while this fact was
known, the length of the Roman foot had been matter of debate. Taking
the mass of the contents of an amphora to be a cube, the length of the
foot corresponding to the above weight is shown to be 0-29699 metres, or
a trifle more than the highest estimate otherwise arrived at
Before tracing farther the relations between the coins and measures of
the East and West, as interpreted by this key, the divisions of time, which
have been not less extensively borrowed, and the native system of numera
tion, must be described.
1. — Number and Time.
In the Babylonia of history two parallel systems of numeration existed,
the sexagesimal of Turanian or Sumerian origin, and the decimal adopted
by the purely Semitic stocks. In the cuneiforms, the same notation is
v y y . ,
used for both up to 60; Y = 1 ; YYY=4; y y Y =9> { = I0J S\ = 20-
57 is written ^^ yyy > after this | stands for 60; \\\ =61; 114 is
made up of 60, 50, and 4 ; J J = 1 20 ; 143 is made up of 2 (sixties) and
23, and so on up to 3,599, which is equivalent to 59 sixties and 59.
After this 602 or 3,600 = unity, so that 4,096, for instance, is made up ot
one sar (3,600), 8 sosses (480) and 16, written YVVV^YY Y '*
Tables of the squares and cubes of different numbers have been found,
and the convenience of the system becomes manifest as the higher num
bers are reached; the cube, for instance, of 32 is written with three figures,
9.6.8. (3,600 x 9 = 32,400 + 60 x 6 = 360 + 8 = 32,768), which with the Arabic
notation requires five figures.
In Assyria, 60 is called sussu, the sossos of Berosus; 600, niru, or neros;
and 3,600, saru, or saros. The decimal system consists of figures only,
but 60 may be written either ^<_^ or p ; 100 is Y>-, 1,000 is C Y>,
and naturally the word for hundred is Semitic. The cycle of 60 and 600
years is common to Uigours, Mongols, and Mantchus ; the Chinese had a
cycle of 60 days, as well as one of 60 solar years of 3651 days each.5
According to one account, they divided the year into four seasons, and
each season into six parts, giving 24 divisions (answering to the 24 hours
of the day) to the year. Considerable traces of the sexagesimal system
1 La Langue primitive de la Chalde'e. F. Lenormant (1875), p. 151 ff.
Cf. Chinese-English Dictionary, by Herbert A. Giles (1892), pp. 116, 192. Nos.
1167 and 1873.

APPENDICES. 435
remain among the Dravidian population of Malabar, and the islanders of
Minicoy ; otherwise Turanian languages in general are quite free from the
elaborate numerical ideas of the men of Sumer and Akkad.
In them, for instance, 20, 40, etc., are only 2 tens, 4 tens, and so on ; in
Akkadian 20 is kasbit, and gives its name to measures forming i of the
standard 60; so 40 is Assyrianized into as, a weight = ij} of a mina; and
in fact the same sign is used for the fraction f and for the number 40,
which is two-thirds of 60. There are two words for 50, derived from
five tens and from five-sixths, and from the latter the primitive word, gig,
for 10 is guessed at. Soss is Assyrian, but perhaps derived from us us =
60 x 60. Niru translates the Akkadian word. There are separate signs
for all the following fractions- -5- i^ 3-^- sji ±° ah ie _J_ A A A 1. and
iui tuj. uic iuiiuwiu0 uailiuiis . -g-^, 60, 60, 60, 60, UCj, i.e. 12, 6, 3, .,, 3 <±liu
f, though i i, and f alone have proper names. The advantage of the
sexagesimal system is that 60 has 11 factors (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15,
20, 30), while 10 has only 3, and 100 only 8 ; raised to the second power
60 will divide by 9, and at the third power also by 8, but the practical
conveniences arising hence could scarcely have been divined a priori.
The question therefore presents itself, Was this remarkable invention
suggested by another achievement of the same people, the division of the
equator into degrees and the thence resulting measurements of time ?
The arguments of Letronne and Brandis on this subject have lost none of
their force by the discoveries which now cause this claim to be made for
the inhabitants of the same country 2,000 years or more before the earliest
date dreamt of by them. The classical tradition on the subject was not
very clear; Hipparchus (150 b.c.) is supposed to have introduced to the
West the astronomical wisdom of Babylonia, which was popularized by
Ptolemy 300 years later. Letronne quotes Achilles Tatius (3rd century
A.D.)for the statement that "The Chaldaeans, whose researches were minutely
exact, ventured to determine the course and the hours of the sun. For
they divide the sun's hours on the day of equinox into 30 limits, during
which that star traverses the whole expanse of the sky in uniform progress.
So that the 30th part of the hour, on the day of equinox is called 'a limit
of the course of the sun.' " 1
Letronne was led by the division of the circle into 720 stadii, used by
Manilius, who was not an astronomer, to infer that the " limit " of the sun
here meant its diameter. The method of obtaining this standard measure
is beautifully simple, but it may be doubted whether the whole after
history of science contains anything neater or more elegant in the way of
observation. To measure one diameter of the sun it sufficed to note the
first moment of its beginning to appear above the horizon, and measure,
or rather weigh, the water which dropped from a vessel between that
moment and the time when the whole disc had appeared. Then by com
paring the water of one diameter, as it may be called, with that which
dropped from the same vessel during the day and night, it was ascertained
that the path of the sun in the equator was exactly 720 diameters long.2
1 Journal des Savants, 1817, p. 739. 2 Brandis, loc. cit., p. 19.

436 APPENDICES.
In the astronomical tablets, according to the learned work of FF. Epping
and Strassmaier,1 the day is not divided, as commonly supposed, into 24
hours, but into 6 periods, each subdivided into 60, making 360 parts, like
the degrees of the circle ; these were again divided by 60 and by 60 again,
giving thus periods of 4 minutes, 4 seconds, and of one-fifteenth of a
second — divisions which might be thought too minute to serve the purpose
of any one but an astronomer, though they are not unlike those used in
Malabar.2 If for ordinary purposes the day was divided into 60 periods, the
"double hour," which is sometimes mentioned, would be 48 minutes
long and correspond roughly to the modern hour of 60 minutes. But
where there was already some tendency towards a duodecimal mode
of reckoning — and the division of the year into 1 2 months suggests this
— it was obvious to divide the 720 diameters by 12, and subsequently,
when the valuable powers of the number 60 had been ascertained, to
make each degree of the circle equal 2 diameters, giving 360 in all.
There is no reason for believing the Greek division of the circle into
360 parts to be ancient. Before Hipparchus, they had made very few
observations, and might have borrowed for their geometry what was for
them an arbitrary division. But, in fact, Ptolemy speaks of degrees of
which 360 make two right angles, and of those of which 360 make four3 — a
laxity which would be exactly accounted for, if the division of the equator
into 720 sun's diameters alternated with that of the abstract circle into 360
degrees. And, under these circumstances, we can have little doubt that
the latter was derived from the former.
The identification of stars and the interpretation of astronomical tablets
present greater difficulties than the most obscure contract tablets, while
results in this field, even when attained, are less intelligible to the laity.
The latest and most competent workers are agreed that a more than respect
able measure of astronomical knowledge had really been attained. The
Babylonians had fairly accurate tables of the times of New Moon, such as
could only be calculated by very laborious methods, till within the last few
years, in Europe. It is not known what theory, if any, they held respect
ing the motions of the sun, moon, and earth, but they anticipated eclipses
and planetary conjunctures in a way impossible to mere empirics. Under
the mythological phrases "The way in reference to Anu " and " The way
in reference to Bel," there is supposed to lurk a perception of the distinc
tion between the pole of the equator and the pole of .the ecliptic, while
the tropic of Capricorn is further denoted by "The way in reference to," or
" followed by Ea." 4
They were acquainted, as M. Oppert has shown, with the period or
cycle of 223 moons (18 years and n days), called saros, after which
eclipses of the moon repeat themselves approximately, and with the great
period of 1,805 Years (22,325 moons), after which the order of the solar
1 Astronomisches aus Babylon, p. 183. 2 Ante, vol. i. p. 547.
3 Letronne, loc. cit. 4 P. Jensen, Die Cosmologie d. Babylonier, pp. 147-9-

APPENDICES. 437
eclipses is repeated. The mythical ages of Berosus represent twelve
Sothic periods (of 1461 years), or 292 sosses — a number which, reduced to
years, reappears in the Hebrew chronology as the period between the
Deluge and the birth of Abraham.
The mere recognition of these periods does not, of course, throw any
light upon the duration of Sumerian history, but, as in the chronology of
China, the position of the constellations gives the desired clue. The signs
of the Zodiac, like so much else, date from the first inhabitants of Meso
potamia, and some of them can be confidently identified. The Babylonian
Zodiac would fall in suitably as to the position of the sun in spring,
summer, and autumn, with a division of the heavens made between five
and six thousand years ago,1 so that its invention may plausibly be assigned
to some time between the date of the Creation, according to Archbishop
Ussher, and that of Sargon of Agade, according to Nabonidus.
The first month of the Akkadian calendar is called " month of the holy
altar,'' at which a ram was the Usual object of sacrifice ; the second month
(Taurus) is that of "the protecting bull;" the third (Gemini), "month of
the twins ;" the fourth is the month " of the message of Istar " (? Virgo).
The sign for the eighth month is perhaps connected with the legend of the
scorpion-man and his wife, who guard a fairy-land with jewelled fruit and
beautiful birds. The ninth month " of the clouds," which fly like an
arrow from the bow, corresponds to the sign Sagittarius ; and the eleventh
month is that " of the curse of rain," or Aquarius.
According to the Observations of Bel there are twelve of these months
"for the year of 360 days of which their number is recorded in full," and
the fifth tablet of the Creation series says : " twelve months of constella
tions by threes he fixed." 2 These were lunar months, and every two or
three years an intercalary month was inserted to keep the natural and the
civil year together.
The Egyptian calendar, on the contrary, ignores the lunar months
altogether, and made the civil year consist of 365 days. This being a
quarter of a day too little, after 735 years have passed, the natural and the
civil year are just six months out, and twice that period, i.e. 1,461 years,
has to pass before the two agree again. The Egyptian Sothic period began
at the season when the rising of the dog star (Eg. Sopet, whence Sothis)
was visible in the east at sunrise. This date, which fell at Memphis on
July 20, was counted as the beginning of the year, as it was the season at
which the Nile began to rise.
As Meyer points out,3 the discrepancy between the civil and the
Sothic year would not vary during an average lifetime by as much as a
month, so that no very practical inconvenience would arise ; and as the
duration of the Sothic period was known, those who were aware of the
discrepancy would also know that it would rectify itself in time. In fact,
1 P. Jensen, Die Cosmologie der Babylonier (1890), p. 320.
2 W. St. Chad Boscawen, British Museum Lectures, ii. 4.
3 Gesch. d. Altherthums in Einzeldarslellungen, Egypt, p. 127 ff

438 APPENDfCES.
the two new year's days were regularly celebrated. The priests kept an
account of the astronomical year, and divided the Sothic period into 365
intervals of four years each, forming as it were one day of the great
Sothic year. The precessional movement of the star caused the year
fixed by the heliacal rising of Sirius to come nearer to an exact 3 65 \ days
than the true solar year; but this is an accident, though it leaves the Sothic
period at 1,461 years, when the solstices would give a cycle of 1,506
years. Special signs were used to indicate in which of the four years of the
Sothic day any special event occurred. There is an inscription of Thothmes
III. giving the date of an heliacal rising of Sirius which would place
its author as reigning in 1580 B.C. ; and a still earlier record of the same
event would make the first Sothic period begin 3192 B.C., and the others
1728 and 271 B.C. respectively, which is 409 years apart from the date
given by Censorinus (writing 238 a.d.) — a discrepancy which Mr. Lockyer
explains by a supposed change in the names of the months, which were
partly significant, and so ceased to be appropriate as the cycle advanced.
Another calculation, followed by Meyer, however, makes the coincidence
of the two new year's days fall in the years 136-139 a.d., 1325-1322 B.C.,
2785-2, and 4246-4, so that even this point is not yet irrevocably
settled. Mr. Norman Lockyer's interesting contribution to the problems of
Egyptian antiquity x appeared after the Egyptian section of the present
work was in type, otherwise the light which he throws on the question of
the " Two Crowns " of Upper and Lower Egypt should have been
utilised on pp. 37, 38. His facts are also of importance in regard to the
question, at what point the founders of Egyptian civilization entered the
country. The orientation of the Pyramids has long been regarded as a
proof of the astronomical attainments of their builders, and the only
difficulty in the way of tracing the orientation of Egyptian temples has
been caused by the great variety of the directions chosen. Mr. Lockyer
has attempted to reduce these variations to groups, with one very import
ant result.
The solar temples of Upper Egypt seem to be connected with a solsti
tial solar cult. At Abydos, the direction of one of the oldest temple
mounds appears to suit a temple built to face the sun setting at the summer
solstice ; and at Thebes there are remains of many solar solstitial temples,
including Karnak and the Memnonium. The great temple of Amen Ra
at Karnak is practically a giant telescope 600 yards long : a series of seven
teen to eighteen apertures in the pylons limit the light, which is being
conducted into the sanctuary, to a narrow beam, which on one night in
the year would stream straight through the temple. Such an arrangement
would allow of the solstice being accurately observed by a flash lasting
about two minutes while the orientation of the temple remained exact.
1 The Dawn of Astronomy, 1894.

APPENDICES. 439
And in this way the exact length of the solar year might be ascertained by
observation. The attention of the learned was naturally and properly directed to the
observation of the solstices, since the knowledge of that date would enable
the rise of the river to be predicted and prepared for ; and this is an argu
ment for regarding the solstitial worship as of native Egyptian origin. The
great temple mound at On or Heliopolis faces the sun in mid April and
mid August, so is connected neither with solstitial nor equinoctial obser
vations and may have been oriented to a northern star. But in temples
at Memphis, Tanis, Sais, Bubastis, and Gizeh, in fact throughout Lower
Egypt, the orientation is, like that of the Pyramids themselves, to sunrise or
sunset at the equinox. There is thus, as Mr. Lockyer observes, " a fun
damental change of astronomical thought," 1 and the difference to an
astronomer is so radical as to suggest a probable difference of race.
Memphis, the Pyramids, and perhaps other towns in the Delta may have
been built by men who worshipped at each equinox a star rising in the
east ; but the solstitial worship found at Thebes and the non-equinoctial
worship of Heliopolis are presumably older than the equinoctial worship
of Memphis. This may have been introduced more directly from Baby
lonia, where the inundation of the two rivers occurs at the equinox rather
than the solstice. And there is thus astronomical as well as etymological
and geographical probability in favour of the colonization of Lower Egypt
independently from the neighbourhood of the Sinaitic Peninsula, instead
of from Upper Egypt. In this case the diorite wrought by the artists of
Gizeh and Lagash will have come from the same quarries. The step
Pyramids, like zigurrats, are an obvious link between Babylonia and Egypt,
and Mr. Lockyer believes that the temple of Babylon to Anu and Bel
must have been oriented to the north, like that of Memphis to Sutekh.
If the solstitial worship of Upper Egypt originated in the Nile valley, the
only clue to the derivation of its followers would have to be found in the
star worship which they also practised. According to Mr. Lockyer's cal
culations, no Sirian temple is to be looked for in Upper Egypt before 3200
b.c. ; after that date two at Karnak, and one each at Denderah, Der el
Bahari, Dosche, Naga and Philae are enumerated, and seven or eight other
stars are suggested as likely to have dictated the direction — and still more
the changes in direction — observable in adjacent temples. He considers
the Egyptian temples to show that aUrsae Majoris, Apella, Antares, Phact,
and a Centauri " were carefully observed, some of them as early as 5000
b.c, the others between 4000 and 3000 b.c. . . . it is possible that at
Edfu and Philae the star Canopus may have been observed as early as
6400 b.c." Calculations of the same kind give the year 3700 b.c. as a
possible date for the foundation of a temple at Thebes. But the author
candidly admits that it has seldom been possible to exclude all possible
sources of error, and for the present perhaps there is more to inspire hope
1 Loc. cit., p. 85.

440

APPENDICES.

than faith in the more definite of the conclusions suggested. Mr. Lockyer
does not seem to have turned his attention to Mr. Bent's observations,
and it may be some time before the star worship of the primitive inhabi
tants of Arabia can be sufficiently understood for it to decide whether the
settlers of Northern Egypt brought their astronomy from there. The
primitive astronomy of the Chinese will also have to be interrogated afresh
before the problems of Babylonia can be either solved or despaired of.1
It may possibly also be worth while to question the astrologers and
teachers of Malabar, where it is said that the art of calculating the rising
of sun, moon, and stars is still a part of primary education, and where it is
easily possible that some primitive methods and traditions may have
lingered on.2
In laying the foundations of an Egyptian temple the " stretching of the
cord " in the desired direction was the first and most important part of the
ceremony, like the " determining the cardinal points " with which the
Chinese ruler was supposed to begin the foundation of any new city or
settlement. In two cases the star used for the alignment is named, viz.
the ak of the Thigh for the temple of Hathor at Denderah, and the Thigh
in general for that of Edfu. It is suggested that the emerald pillar that
shone by night, in the temple of Herakles at Tyre,3 was illuminated by the
star to which it was built, and the telescope arrangement already described
in the case of solar temples would give unsuspected brilliancy to the light
of some stars in the Egyptian climate.
There are no apparent signs of artificial light having been used in dark
tomb chambers, and it is suggested that in them, as in the sanctuaries of
the temples, light may have been obtained by a series of reflecting mirrors.
But the natural effect of the single ray of sun or star light would be suffi
ciently impressive by itself to form an important part in the ritual of
1 The later Chinese have exercised themselves vainly about "the nine paths of the
moon," known under and before the Hans but since forgotten, and in fact connected
with the period of eighteen odd years, called saros by the Babylonians. (Biot, fournal
des Savants, 1840, p. 91.) The differences and resemblance between the lunar Zodiac
of China, India, and Arabia, were discussed by Richthofen and Whitney when the know
ledge of Akkadian texts had made less progress than now, but the indications of wide
divergence from a remote common source multiply rather than not.
2 Dr. Gustav Oppert, in his recent work, The Inhabitants of Bharatavarsa or India
(1894), argues that the whole peninsula was formerly inhabited by a population akin to
the Dravidians of the South. And he connects the Malayali with the Mallas, a race of
this type, whose name he finds perpetuated in the names of districts, demons, moun
tains, rivers and plants, as well as people. He quotes several curious customary prero
gatives of the so-called Pariahs of Southern India, which confirm their own traditions of
ancient supremacy. But perhaps, in the face of evidence since collected in the same
direction, a mere expression of opinion by the same author in a Lecture on the Ancient
Commerce of India, delivered fifteen years ago, will have most weight, as resting on
considerations of an entirely different class from those dealt with in the preceding text.
Dr. Oppert observed (p. 22), "There exists no doubt up to this very day a singularly
striking affinity between the non-Aryan elements of India, whether Kushite or Dravidian,
on the one hand, and the old Turanian and Kushite empires on the other part." The
resemblance which he instances between the famous pagodas of Tanjore and Madura
and the Pyramids is perhaps open to discussion, but a general sense of resemblance, like
that between the Chinese and the Hottentots, which struck Sir John Barrow, in the mind
of a competent observer, is itself a fact deserving attention.
3 Herod., ii. 44.

APPENDfCES. 441
worship. "To see his father Ra in Habenben " was a privilege enjoyed
by the king, who, standing with his back to the light would suddenly
behold the image of the god illuminated by the rising sun. Such effects of
natural magic probably blended with the more deliberate artifices by which
the priests are supposed to have made the divine images give expression
to their own views. Such devices as speaking and moving statues are
commonly supposed to belong to the decadence of a faith ; yet it is in a
far from ancient account of the election of Ethiopian kings that we catch a
glimpse of what may be one more trait common to Egypt and Babylonia. On
two such occasions Amon of Napata is represented as seizing hold of one of
the royal brothers, and then addressing him, in the shades of the sanctuary,
as the elected king. Some other author, followed by Synesius, bishop of
Ptolemais, makes the kings of Egypt go through a similar election, at which
the priests, the warriors, and the reigning king give their votes, while the
gods intervene, if the other parties are equally divided.1 It will be re
membered that the king in Babylonia was not lawfully enthroned until he
had " taken the hands of Bel," and it is impossible not to ask whether the
phrase indicates something answering to an Egyptian original of the Ethio
pian selection or adoption of a candidate by the god.
The temple at Jerusalem was of the equinoctial school, and the entrance
of the sunlight on the morning of the spring equinox was part of the
ceremonial. The priest being in the naos, the worshippers outside " with
their backs to the sun could see the high priest by means of the sunlight
reflected from the jewels in his garments," i.e. the sardonyxes on the
high priest's shoulders, which according to Josephus " shined out when
God was present at their sacrifices," a miraculous shining which was said
to have ceased 200 years before his time. Evidently the Jews had in
herited an astronomical temple of which they did not understand the pur
pose, and as they failed to regulate their feasts by the strict solar year the
manifestation ceased. In Egypt, where astronomical science continued
alive, if the precession of the equinoxes made a temple lose its efficiency
for ceremonies connected with celestial bodies, the axis of the temple
received a slight twist, so as to enable later additions to serve the old
purpose, or if this too became impossible, another temple with the needful
change of direction would be set up adjoining the old one.
The Egyptians were acquainted at so early a date with the true length
of the solar year, that it is hard to explain their keeping up the tradition of
a year of 360 days, unless we imagine that to have been the length of the
year assumed, as it were a priori, to correspond with the degrees of the
circle and supposed to represent pure mathematical truth as distinct from
mere empiricism. "At Philae in late times in the temple of Osiris, there
were 360 bowls for sacrifice which were filled daily with milk by a specified
rotation of priests. At Acanthus there was a perforated cask into which
one of the 360 priests poured water from the Nile daily." 2 And such a
1 Etudes de Mythologie et a" Archlologie Egyptiennes, par G. Maspero (1893), vol. i.
pp. 86, 7. 2 L.c, p. 248.

442 APPENDICES.
machinery for keeping count of the days of a year which had no religious,
civil, or political use can only represent an ancient tradition, connected
perhaps with the primitive sanctity of the numbers six and sixty and their
multiple. 2. — Weights, Measures, and Money.
It is possible that the aperture through which the water ran when
measuring the sun's path may have been so calculated as to let a mina of
water run through in an hour, so as to connect the measures of time with
those of length and capacity. The Mesopotamian weights which have
been found and tested are more exact than those of the Greeks and
Romans; they have been found of i, 2, 5, 15, and 30 mina, i.e. up to
half a talent, and of such fractions as Jff, -fa, and f of a mina. The con
venience of 60 as a common denominator shows itself in the fractions.
There are 60 shekels to a mina, but as we have seen in the contracts, only
the odd shekels are counted as such, everything that can be is called a
fraction of a mina ; thus we have f, \, \, and \ of -fa, i.e. -fa, -j-J^, y^,
and -5^0 of a mina.
According to M. Oppert,1 the measures of capacity are not as numerous
as Brandis supposed, the table being as follows : —
10 sahia make 1 qa
27 qa „ 1 ap
60 ,, ,, 1 imer (homer)
36 „ „ 1 pi
180 qa, 3 imer, or 5 pi ,, 1 gur
but the value of these measures need not be discussed here.
The measure used for both lands and buildings in the age of Hammu
rabi, and called sar, does not appear in the later deeds, and any area that
can be suggested as suitable to the name (e.g. 360 square yards) would be so
much too large for a measure of houses that one is driven to suppose that
two measures, used for different purposes, bore the same name. Probably,
as M. Revillout takes to have been the case later, building sites were nor
mally oblong, so that the sar of house property might be 60 measures one
way and much less the other. In the later deeds, while arable or pasture
land is measured by the quantity of seed required to sow it, town lots and
building land are measured by the inch, yard, and rod. According to M.
Oppert, 24 inches make one U, and 7 U one qanu, or rod, like the 24
hours of the day, and 7 days of the week ; the rod at this rate is about
14 feet, or 168 inches. The plots of ground to be measured were of
course never exactly square, but they were commonly parallelograms, with
angles not very far removed from a right angle ; to obtain the superficial
measurement, Chaldaean surveyors took the mean of two actual measure-
1 Les Mesures Assyriens de capacite1 et de superfecie. Revue (TAssyriologie, 1884,
p. 124.

APPENDICES. 443
ments of length and width and multiplied these two together with results
that were sometimes quite exact and never very far from the mark.
The data about the various measures are too imperfect and confused for
the value of the different measures of length and area to be positively
determined, and it is even possible that land was actually sown afresh by
measure, when it was intended to be sold, which would account for eccen
tricities of detail. But a fact of more interest than the technicalities of
surveying is amply illustrated by the existing contracts, namely the com
parative value of land in town and country districts. The price of a rod
of land in the country varied from 17 to 75 drachms, while if the same
measures were used for town holdings, the most valuable of these fetched
170 times as much as the most valuable fields. In towns the price of land
by square metre varied from eighteen pence to 6s. 6d. The latter price
seems too high and the disproportion too great, considering the popularity
of land as an investment, so that most likely the ancient distinction be
tween a sar of land and a sar of houses still subsisted in some form.
In the case of the town house, which Itti-marduk-baladu acquired in ex
change for fields and plantations, the house is said to measure 24 rods in
all (or 1 176 square yards), and the field to be one of a gur of seed, which
represents between 50 and 60,000 square yards, so that the comparative
value is about as 1 to 45, which is not unreasonable when we consider
that it includes the buildings. There is at least no such artificial dispro
portion as in the modem capitals of Europe. An English banker does
not give 45 acres of orchard and arable land for one acre of land with
buildings on it in London.
With the recognition of a common starting point for the weights and
measures of all civilized nations, it becomes possible to supply the blanks
in one record by the help of others, which are seldom all imperfect in the
same place. Egypt and Babylonia have not only the same unit of length —
in the cubit of 201^ inches — but also the same -original unit of weight.
The only difference is that the Egyptians followed a decimal, and the
Babylonians a sexagesimal subdivision. Egypt dividing the talent, of
weight and money, of 300 uten into 3000 parts, or kite ; and the latter
dividing the weight talent into 60 mina, and then 60 smaller parts, but the
money talent into 60 mina with an alternative "light" talent and mina
containing 50 parts instead of 60. The Samian ell was the same as the
Babylonian, and the exception which Brandis supposed to be offered, to
the general prevalence of Babylonian weights and measures, in the Nile
valley and the Italian peninsula, are now shown by Brugsch to be only
apparent. Indeed, the history of Egyptian values gives independent con
firmation to the conclusions arrived at respecting those of Babylonia.
The Ptolemaic coinage, according to this view, was not a new Greek
importation — except so far as the use of any coined money was foreign to
primitive Egyptian habits — but was based on old Egyptian weights. From
the 1 8th century b.c. two of these were in use, the uten and the kite, the
latter being -fa of the first. The kite has been weighed and found equiva-

444 APPENDICES.
lent to 9-09591 grammes; the uten therefore should weigh 90-9591 gr.
These are the only weights used for the precious metals ; quantities of
36,000 and upwards are given in uten, and the smallest sums in fractions
of a kite. The relation between the Roman foot and the cubic con
tents of a Roman amphora has been mentioned already, and a comparison
of Persian and Greek measures points to a similar correspondence, in the
standards used by them. But the remarkable thing is that the 80 Roman
pounds which the amphora was to weigh (26,196 grammes) coincides to a
fraction with 36 x 80 or 2,880 Egyptian kite.
The correspondence between the Egyptian and the Babylonian measures
is still more obvious. Brandis started from the assumption that the Baby
lonian cubic foot represented the dimensions of the Babylonian talent in
some liquid with a specific gravity very near that of distilled water ; and
thus obtained a length for the Babylonian foot of 0-320 m. Brugsch,
taking the Babylonian talent as equivalent to 3,600 Egyptian kite, and ex
tracting the cube root of the corresponding weight in grammes (32745-276),
arrives at the practically identical length of 0-31992 m. The same
proportion holds good in the case of the Egyptian talent of 300 kite,
weighing 27287-73 grammes; extracting the cube root of this, the length
of the Egyptian foot comes out 0-30106 m., and the short and the
royal ell respectively 0-45159 m. and 0-52686 m. ; while the length
given independently for the three by Lepsius was 0-300, 0-450, and 0-525,
though as to the latter the average given by several actual measurements
is nearer 0-526. Such a correspondence in method is even more con
clusive than identity of results would be as a proof of common origin.
The correspondence between the moneys of Egypt and Babylonia will
be most easily recognised in tabular form, and the table suggests that the
so-called " light talent " and mina might have been borrowed from Egypt ;
as, however, the Assyrians also used a decimal system whenever not borrow
ing wholesale from Babylonia, it might equally well represent a compromise
made for their benefit : —
1 Babylonian talent = ii Egyptian talent, or 3,600 kite.

50

, mina

= I

J)

))

3

000

I ,

n

= 6

}>

uten, or

60

1
6 )

57

= I

>}

?;

10

2
6 0 5

?J

= I

5?

stater, or

2

1
5 0 J

) J)

=

ii
1
6 0 J
J)
=
r
The Egyptian kite is thus equal to the Babylonian shekel, so that the
monetary unit is the same in the two countries. Of course we are not
called on to suppose that Babylonia received this unit from Egypt, any
more than the converse, which Egyptologists would be loth to believe. The
use of hieroglyphs to be read susu, denoting the mina of 60 shekels, cer
tainly looks like borrowing within historic times ; but Dr. Brugsch con-
APPENDICES. 445
nects the root ss with the number six,1 and in that case both word and
notion would belong to the common furniture of the pre-historic people
from whom both Egyptians and Babylonians proceeded.2 The mysterious
magistracy or Great Houses of the Six previously alluded to, also seems to
show that the number six possessed a traditional sacredness or significance
at the earliest times which was subsequently lost sight of, and this would
harmonise very well with the view that it had been important in an obsolete
system of numeration.3
The different value of the monetary unit in the Ptolemaic period is
partly connected with the change in the relative value of silver and copper.
From the eleventh century onwards, these metals and not gold were
used as standards by weight. From a comparison of the price of honey
as given in silver and copper (about iooo B.C.), it appears that fa silver
kite=8 copper do., i.e. that silver was to copper as 80 to 1. In the age of
Thothmes III. the proportion was 48 to 1, while before the Roman
period it had sunk to 120 to 1. The change was spread over 12 or 14
centuries, and was due to natural economic causes. But the substitution
of the silver drachm for the silver kite just corresponds to the change of
value, so as to leave the proportion between the common silver and the
common copper coin the same. The Coptic name for the didrachmon
was kite and for the drachm half-kite, thus pointing to a (pre-Persian)
period, when the proportion between the two metals was as 96 to 1, as the
time when coins were first struck in Egypt.
Egyptian texts are fuller on the subject of measures of area than those of
Babylonia and Assyria, and it is possible that additional light may be
thrown on the latter by Mr. Griffith's latest paper.4 The common Egyp
tian measures of length are of the primitive sort which survive in the
English measurement of horses by " hands." The digit, the palm, the
handsbreadth (with the thumb included), the long and short span, the upper
arm, and the short and royal cubits, are measures with no apparent refer
ence to a scientific standard. The royal cubit, of about 20-6 in., contains
7 palms and 28 digits. The khet of 100 cubits takes its name from the
roll of cord used for measuring. The square khet — or set, the Greek
arura — was considered to be composed of 100 strips of one cubit broad
by 100 long. The earliest inscriptions have a hieroglyph for ten arura,
suggesting either a landmark or, like the sign for the set, an oblong slip,
which seems to imply that the original unit of cultivation was oblong.
From the Twelfth to the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties signs are
1 The peculiar use of this number has been noted, ante, vol. i. p. 61.
2 Mr. Ridgeway, in the work referred to above, assumes throughout that the sexa
gesimal Babylonian notation was a comparatively modern invention, but the recurrence
of the numbers 15 and 30 in the lists of Gudea's offerings and the obviously primitive use
effractions of 60 noted above, which were sufficiently convincing arguments on the other
side, have now been supplemented (ante, vol. i. p. 247) by an undoubtedly archaic in
scription showing the notation in use.
3 In China the same number had a traditional importance, which can be measured by
a reference to the index of the Confucian texts, subvoc, Six ; S. B., xxxviii. p. 482.
4 P. S. B.A., June, 1892.

446 APPENDICES.
found for fa, -fa-g, and -fa„ of a set and also for \, \, -J-. The half arura
was an oblong of 50 cubits by 100, but the quarter was a square of 25
cubits. Ten arura contain about 6f acres, and it seems rather as if the
size of the standard farm or holding had stood at this amount under the
ancient monarchy and at one arura under the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Dynasties. Such a change is a natural result of increased population and
more profitable culture. Even the higher limit implies a class of compara
tively small cultivators, — tenant farmers under feudal nobles. The
measures of length and of area stood in such well-defined customary re
lations that the same names were used indifferently according to the con
text, a circumstance which has added to the difficulties of interpretation.1
The common measure of capacity — the hekt — is indicated by a barrel
from which grain is pouring; the fractions of it, like those of the set, form
a dimidiated series from 1 to -fa. The hieratic sign for -fa is + which is
used as the symbol for quartering. One-tenth of the hekt is also a
favourite measure, and -fag, the fraction of the hekt, which serves to unite
the two series, is called the fraction. The hekt is multiplied up to four as
well as divided. The tvvo systems of binary and decimal subdivision are
notable — especially on account of the total absence of any reminiscence of
duodecimal — to say nothing of sexagesimal — methods.
The importance which may attach to the details of this subject is mani
fest from the remarkable value of the oldest Egyptian weight yet known.
A ten unit weight of Khufu and a five gold unit weight of Amenhotep I.
(18th Dynasty) weigh 206 and 207-6 grs. respectively; while two other
weights, respectively of the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties, weigh
196-5 and 197-7 grs.— the four having exactly the range attributed to the
so-called /Eginetan standard. This standard prevailed originally over
nearly the whole of Peloponnessus, in Athens, Bceotia, Phocis, Locris,
Thessaly, the Thracian Chersonese, Crete, Cyme, Teos, Cnidos, and
Cameiros. It has been regarded as a reduction of the Phoenician standard,
but Mr. Petrie is probably right in considering it as the remains of an
earlier tradition dravvn from some origin connected with Egypt. If there
were Punites on the Mediterranean who did not settle first in Phoenicia,
they might be the true authors of this perplexing element.
The demotic papyri show two non-Egyptian weights introduced from
Western Asia, the kirkor or talent of 300 uten, and the stater (formerly read
shekel), equivalent to 2 kite. A common formula in the Egyptian texts :
" Copper 24 kite to fa," has been interpreted, as referring to a proportion
of alloy ; but if we read it to mean " 24 copper kite=^ silver kite," then
48 copper kite = yL silver kite ; 2 and this is exactly the weight of a Ptole
maic silver drachm and \ of the normal tetradrachmon. But if the silver
drachm = 48 copper kite, the Egyptian designation for the latter must
1 The travelling Briton is slow to understand that "Kilo" in France means by
usage always a Kilpgramme, the measure of weight, "and that the same abbreviation is
not available in describing Kilometres, the measure of distance.
2 Brugsch, loc. cit.

APPENDICES.

447

answer to the Greek copper coin chalkus, of which 48 went to a silver
drachm. But the chalkus appears to be regularly valued at 2), copper
drachms, so that the Egyptian copper kite = 2 \ drachms and the copper
stater =5 copper drachms. At this rate 120 copper drachms would go to
one silver one, giving the proportion between the metals already mentioned
of 120 to 1 for the Ptolemaic age.
There is thus a sufficient reason for the divergence of the Ptolemaic
coins from the primitive standards of the uten and kite weights, and one
which in no way invalidates the theory of their derivation from the common
standard of the Babylonian water-cube talent. A satisfactory proof, that
the correspondence between the Egyptian and Babylonian weights has
been successfully established, is that Dr. Brugsch has done what Brandis
conjectured a priori to be possible, namely reduced the odd numbers of
pounds and loths mentioned as tribute in the great Harris papyrus to an
even number of mina. The pound and loth correspond to the uten and
kite, and it is in a similar passage in the account of the victories of
Thothmes III. at Karnak that the word susu is used in the sense of mina
The latter when divided by sosses give an even number (600) of light or
50 shekel mina ; and by the same process the tributes from different
districts received by Rameses III. are reduced from odd numbers with
fractions to sums of 800, 11,300, 12,000 and 15,000 mina.
The close correspondence vvhich Dr. Brugsch traces between the
Egyptian and the old Italian unit of weight is very interesting and impor
tant, but taken in connection with other metric systems in the countries of
the Mediterranean, it does not point so clearly to a connection between
Egypt and Italy as to a connection between the whole of the old trading
world, from Mesopotamia to Marseilles.
The sexagesimal system of Babylonia was nowhere adopted in its
entirety, but the extent to which duodecimal divisions are adhered to is
some measure of the strength of its influence. The Italo-Sicilian pound
or litra was divided into 1 2 parts, each equivalent to an Egyptian stater.
The Italic talent of 120 litra was thus equal to 1,440 Egyptian staters, i.e.
12x120 (the "long hundred" of Northern Europe) or 24x60, like the
divisions of the day and hour. The Egyptians following the decimal
system, obtained the talent of 1,500 staters; but the weight of the Egyptian
uten (90-9591 gr.) multiplied by 360 gives 32745-276 grammes, while the
estimated weight of 100 Roman pounds, according to Boeckh and Momm-
sen, is 32745-3. The Egyptian and the Roman talent, that is, stand to
each other exactly in the relation of 10 to 12. But what is perhaps even
more significant, the subdivisions of the Roman pound proceed by frac
tions exactly like the fractions of the Babylonian gur, made by adding
6 qa or multiples of 6. The uncia is 3 kite, and from 6 to 36 kite, the
Roman measures advance by steps of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 kite, and so on; but
the lesser weights from the siliqua to the sicilicus represent forty-eighths of
a kite, 1 3 \™ '" ( = one drachm), ££• and if.
Such fractions are not suggested by or borrowed from the Egyptian

448 APPENDICES.
measures, but they have parallels in Greece, where duodecimal sub
divisions of the coin in general use were common. The fractions of the
Phoenician stater met with at Miletus were \, \, \, fa, and -fa ; at Chios -»-
and fa, at Samos and Cyzicus f- ; -fa at ^Egina and I in Macedonia, while
Cyprus had coins |, a, |, fa, fa, and fa of a stater, and Corinth |, -i, and
fa of the stater before the drachm was used.
The history of the matter is that the ancient Babylonians, like the
modern Chinese, did so much business, and by force of habit did it so
easily, by the help of silver cut and weighed, that they never felt the want
of coins. Probably they were at heart anarchists, in the sense that the
Chinese are so, and the way in which the weight of the Babylonian shekel
was gradually impaired, — as coins struck by Greek Governments took the
place of the "current money with the merchants" with his scale and
weights, — may be cited to show that the ancient use had its advantages.
No doubt on the whole the balance of convenience is in favour of coined
money, and the same turn of mind which substitutes an alphabet for a
syllabary substitutes money for weighed metal. The Phoenicians probably
contributed to both innovations, and there was doubtless a transitional
stage in which bars of metal, ready made up into convenient sizes, were
used and stamped with their weight. Six such bars of silver were found
together by Dr. Schliemann in the Troad, and when allowance was made
for oxidization and weathering, they appeared to average about one-third
of a mina each.
The first coins were probably struck in Asia Minor, where electrum, a
natural alloy of silver and gold, was found. Whether Lydia or Cyzicus
led the way is uncertain, but the pale gold or electrum of the latter city
constituted, with the Persian darics, "the staple of the gold currency of the
whole ancient world," x till the gold staters of the Macedonian kings were
introduced. The Cyzicus mint possessed something like a monopoly of
coining these staters, and till pure gold coins were introduced, they pro
bably fetched more than their value, which was about ten times that of
silver, while in Assyria gold was reckoned to be as 13I to 1 in comparison
with silver.
The intricacies of the Mediterranean coinage systems mainly originate
from the Phoenician distaste for the sexagesimal notation. They borrowed
the shekel in its original form as fa oi a mina, but starting from it they
made a new mina of 50 shekels ; they still reckoned 60 mina to a talent,
and thus, like the Egyptians, got a talent of 3,000 shekels. The Baby
lonians used two talents and mina, the " heavy" and the "light," of which
the former was double the weight of the latter, so that one cannot con
veniently designate the 50 mina talent as light. In fact, it is a reduction
of the heavy Babylonian talent that the Phoenicians are supposed to have
disseminated : the Ionian Greeks borrowed from the latter, and took fa of
the heavy Babylonian mina for their unit, the stater. The mina or shekel
of Carchemish, which is frequently mentioned in Babylonian contracts,
1 Historia Numorum, by Barclay V. Head, 1887, p. 449.

APPENDICES. 449
may, it is conjectured, represent the light Babylonian mina, and if so the
Lydians will have borrowed it from them. Mr. Head suggests that the
" people of the sea," who invaded Egypt in concert with the Khita, would
naturally use the mina of Carchemish. The Phocasan stater was -fa, of the
heavy Babylonian mina, and just twice the value of the Lydian gold stater
of Crcesus, and the oldest Eubcean coins followed the same standard.
The heavy silver stater was in practice halved and quartered, and the
lighter one, as at Corinth, divided by 3, so as to make the coin in
common use any way about the same size, like a franc or shilling.
The Greek coins, in all cases, fell below the standard of weight from
which they are supposed to be derived. Thus the Phoenician or Grseco
Asiatic silver standard, based on the heavy gold mina of Mesopotamia, had
in theory a stater weighing 230 grs. This was reduced in coining to 200
or thereabouts. Indeed, "the earliest known stater of ^Egina (circ.l 700
b.c.) is singular in weighing as much as 207 grs.; the average is nearer
194, to which corresponds a drachm of 97 grs., a tri-obol of 48, a di-obol of
32, with lesser coins of 24, iS, 8, and 4 grs. each. The light Lydian stater,
to begin with, should have weighed 172-9 grs., but suffered a corresponding
depreciation. The reason for following the course of these different standards from
East to West is that we may be certain, wherever money has gone, men
and customs have gone also ; and it so happens that the routes traced out
for the various forms of Babylonian mina by a disinterested numismatist,
are just those along which we are brought, by other considerations, to look
for social and ethnic affinities not hitherto generally recognised.
According to Mr. Head there were four principal tracks: "(1) The
southern route, starting from Sidon and Tyre, and proceeding from one
Phoenician station to another, across the Cretan Sea to Peloponnessus and
iEgina, where the Phoenician silver stater of 236-220 grs. was gradually
deteriorated into the ^Eginitic stater of 194-180 grs. (2) The central
route, leading straight across the sea from Samos to Eubcea, Corinth and
Athens. By this route the light Babylonic gold weight of 130 grs. passing
into Europe and being there used for silver, became known as the Euboic
(Attic or Corinthian) silver stater of 135-125 gr. (3) The northern route,
(a) by land, from Phrygia across the Hellespont into Thrace, where the
old Babylonic silver stater of 173 grs. took root in the Panga^an district as
a stater weighing about 150 grs. (4) The northern route, (b) by sea, from
Miletus and other towns of Western Asia Minor to Abdera in Thrace,
whence the Phoenician stater of 236-220 grs. penetrated into Macedon,
and there gave rise, in later times, to the Macedonian standard of 224 grs."
Along one or other of these lines the peculiar institutions of the primitive
civilized race also spread, and along all of them there spread the con
ceptions of an equitable and liberal commercial code, subsequently gathered
together by Roman jurists as dicta of the law of nations. The /Eginetan
standard, which the Greeks supposed to be the earliest, was very widely dif
fused, and continued in force, in places, till far down in the Roman period.
vol. 11. — p.c. G G

450 APPENDICES.
Solon's currency reform for the relief of debtors was supposed to have con
sisted in substituting the Euboic for the yEginetan standard, and making
the new coins, worth nearly 30 per cent, less, legal tender. But the newly
discovered Aristotelian Polity of Athens treats the two measures as distinct.
The new money was pure and of full weight, and so became popular ; pos
sibly the Euboic standard, if introduced through Samos, had had less time
to degenerate in transit; any way, Athenian owls were in great demand;
they have been found far up the Oxus, were copied in Arabia, and circulated
so far beyond the limits of artistic Greek taste, that the archaic character of
the first stamps was retained from policy, when the Athenians themselves
would probably have preferred, and could certainly have produced some
thing intrinsically beautiful.
The Thracian mining tribes, who brought the Babylonic silver standard
with them to Europe, were of Pelasgic affinities, and there is reason to
believe that the pre-Hellenic element was strongest in the westernmost
of the so-called Greek colonies in the Mediterranean. The ^Eginetan
standard was mostly followed in Southern Italy, though the colonists were
supposed to start from Eubcea. But most of the towns of Magna Gratia
seem to have had coins of their own, struck independently, but of cognate
value, so as to be interchangeable at need ; their stater averaged about 126
grs., and was divided into 3 drachms of 42 grs. on the Corinthian pattern.
Etruria was apparently supplied from Eubcea, but the reduced yEginetan
or Persian standard was also used there, along with the native heavy
bronze coinage: silver coins are found marked 20, 10, 5, and 2\, indicating
their relation to the bronze unit.
About five-and-twenty years ago a hoard of small Greek silver coins
was found near Marseilles, including some 2,000 specimens of archaic
style and 25 different sorts, and similar finds on a smaller scale have
been made elsewhere. They bear no legend, and differ too much to have
been the coinage of a single town, and are therefore probably the currency
of a loose kind of monetary confederacy1 (like that of the Greek towns in
Italy), " of which the Phocsean towns of Velia in Italy, Massilia in Gaul,
and perhaps Emporiae in Spain, were members. The weight standard to
which these interesting little coins belong is the Phoenician, of which the
stater weighed about 220 grs. or somewhat less. They are for the most
part i2ths or obols, with a weight of 18 grs."
The Carthaginians, who might be expected to adhere most closely to the
usage of the Phoenicians among themselves, probably counted 6,000
drachms to a talent Any way they had pieces of 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12
times some unit nearly equivalent to the drachm. This unit is put by
Brandis2 at fa-^ oi the Babylonian royal mina, and so corresponds to the
weight equivalent to the smallest gold unit, gold being, as already mentioned,
13J to 1 as compared with silver in Asia. A curious trace of this propor
tion is preserved in the amount of Lycian fines, those imposed for injuring
1 Hist. Num., p. 56. 2 Loc. cit., p. 148.

APPENDICES. 451
graves being sometimes fixed at thirteen coins, i.e. the amount of silver
required to make up one gold weight, as that metal was not coined.
Another and the most advanced example of a monetary union is that of
the Lycian league, who allowed foreign silver, as well as that of all the con
federate cities, to circulate if it received the triquetra stamp of the league.1
The history and meaning of this symbol — vvhich is virtually the same as
the arms of the Isle of Man — forms a tempting subject of speculation, but
we have already wandered rather too far from our proper theme.
The true cradle of metrology turns out to be identical with the cradle of
primitive civilization, and on the common, unimpassioned ground of coins,
weights and measures, data may be found for solving or harmonising such
of the controversies between Classical and Oriental scholars as have their
hidden root in the specialist's natural jealousy of specialities he has not
mastered. The metrologist, at all events, who desires to know exactly how
the first merchants of the world '' weighed their money and measured their
grain," must be content to begin his studies in the land of Sumer and
Akkad. 1 Some 5th and 6th century coins of Herasa bear the inscription Arkadikon, as if issued
by some kind of Arcadian league with common coinage : a currency is most useful to a
confederacy.

APPENDIX F.
Vol. i., pp. 4, 557; vol. ii., p. 13.
Peru. -
To " survey mankind " literally " from China to Peru " is too large an
undertaking for even tvvo long volumes ; and; though the civilization of the
Incas is genetically akin to that of ancient Egypt and China, the chrono
logical interval between its rise and theirs offers a sufficient excuse for
treating Peru as outside the subject of the present work. At the same
time, as we have not hesitated to illustrate or interpret the usages of civi
lized antiquity by that of later stocks of inferior development, it may be
asked why the line is drawn at the Canaries, or the Pyrenees and Malabar,
to the exclusion of the New World, and all those stages on the ocean route
towards it from Eastern Asia, where ethnologists have reported customs
akin to many of those described above.
It may be admitted at once that common meals, village hospitality, quasi-
communism of different kinds, the habit of tracing descent from the mother,
rudimentary mummification, female polygamy, and other traits, met with in
the Malay Archipelago, Australia, and the Islands of the Pacific, will give
an indication of race relationship, if it should be shown hereafter that they
are not universal characteristics of a certain stage of social development.1
But this point is not one to be decided in a parenthesis, and, at any rate,
we only know the primitive races of the Southern Seas in a state which,
however amiable and picturesque, cannot be called civilized in the sense
that the literary nations of antiquity are so.
The ruling race of Peru must have differentiated itself from a stock vir
tually on the level of the Canarians, and, without entering into details or
controversies respecting its origin, history, and antiquities, it may be con
venient to subjoin a summary of the points recorded by the Inca Garcil-
asso de la Vega, vvhich bear the most obvious resemblance to features in
the civilized communities of the ancient East.
The whole kingdom of Peru was called Itahuantui-suya, according to the
Inca the " four quarters of the World," 2 corresponding to the four cardinal
points, or according to Markham, merely " the four provinces," distinguished
by their several direction in regard to the capital, Cuzco ; "so that, in point
1 The pi-pi of the Marquesas Islands (Typee, Hermann Melville, p. 89) recalls the
nuraghs and talayots of the Mediterranean.
» Royal Commentaries on the Yncas, Garcilasso de la Vega, tr. Clements Markham,
Hakluyt boa, 1069, 1. pp. 30, 142.

APPENDICES.

455

of fact, the use of one of these divisions in a discourse was the same as
saying to the east or west ; and the four roads issuing from the city were
also so called because they led to the four divisions of the Empire." There
were four viceroys for the four districts ; and there was some fourfold
arrangement of "upper" and "lower" towns, of which the significance is
not clear. The villages founded by the first Inca " were at first small, the
largest not having more than one hundred houses, and the smallest about
twenty-five or thirty." 1 In all the towns the inhabitants were registered
by decades, one as a decurion to have charge of the other nine. Five of
these decurions had one to rule them, who thus commanded fifty men.
Two of these rulers of fifty had a superior who commanded ioo men ; five
centurions had a chief (ruling 500), and two of these obeyed a general com
manding 1,000, the largest troop recognised.'2
It was the decurion's business to see that seed was supplied for sowing,
cloth for clothes, houses built, or re-built if necessary ; also to report of
fences, among which were reckoned removing landmarks, diverting water,
and burning a house or bridge. The decurions had also to report births
and deaths monthly to their superiors, and a summary report was given
yearly to the king, including a return of the soldiers killed in war. These
census returns were required in order to regulate the supply of food, and
that of cloth and cotton. Travelling censors or overseers were employed.
The father was punished for the child's offence. The general language of
Peru had two words for son — son of a father, and son of a mother. 3
Garcilasso speaks of a school-fellow " whom I may call my brother, for we
were born in the same house, and his father brought me up." i But he also
mentions how, before beginning his history, he wrote to other old school
fellows, asking them for help, and for particulars respecting the Incas' con
quests " in the provinces of their mothers." 5
The king's titles are, " Sole Lord," " Lover of the Poor," and " Son of the
Sun," the Incas being rather naively praised by their descendant for their
superior skill in "selecting ancestors." The king's wife was called "Our
Mother." The twelfth Inca, Huayna Ccapac, was said never to refuse the
prayer of a woman, and one of his father's concubines therefore interceded
for her native province after its rebellion : on which he replied : " I well
perceive that thou art Maman-chic," i.e. Common Mother, meaning, " My
Mother and the mother of thy children."6 In describing all the Inca con
quests, the formula used represents them as desiring to extend the blessings
of civilization : they are slow in attack, and try to do the enemy as little
damage as possible, and receive the first overtures for peace with kindness
and presents. Then they make roads, bridges, and irrigation works for
their new subjects.7
Every year or two years the girls from eighteen to twenty, and the men
of twenty-four and upwards, were assembled in the city of Cuzco, and mar-
1 /*., p. 80. 2 ib., p. 143. 3 lb., p. 314. 4 lb., p. 211.
5 lb., p. 77. » Vol. ii. p. 438. 7 Vol. i. p. 157.

454 APPENDICES.
ried, if of high rank, by the Inca, otherwise by his ministers. Houses were
provided by the common labour of the villagers for the new couples. Villa
gers were obliged to intermarry ; " only sisters were reserved." The Inca
married his eldest sister, " that the blood might be preserved pure," and
others in order of seniority, if necessary to obtain children ; failing sisters,
the nearest cousin, aunt, or niece. Failing legitimate children, the eldest
relation of pure blood might inherit.1 The dignity of primogeniture was
much considered among the Incas, and the obligation to marry the eldest
sister points to the inheritance passing with her.2 A year of widowhood
was strictly observed, and the re-marriage of widows discountenanced. The
bodies of the dead kings were " embalmed, so as to appear as if they were
alive," Acosta says, "by means of a sort of bitumen," the eyes being formed
of small pellets of gold.3
The sixth Inca, Rocca, established schools in Cuzco, and said, "If he
had to worship anything on this lower earth, it would be a discreet and
learned man, the chief of all created things." They had a high priest of
the temple of the Sun at Cuzco, who was an uncle or brother of the king,
or at least a legitimate member of the royal family. There was a great
feast of the Sun at the summer solstice, but the principal feast was ob
served at the autumn equinox. The year had 365 days, the common people
dating by harvests and the Incas by the movement of the sun,4 which
they measured by the help of towers — -according to Garcilasso 8 and to
Acosta 12 in number — the towers being placed east and west of Cuzco,
and the date of the summer and winter solstice determined by the falling
of the shadow between the smaller towers. The term between the end of
the solar and the lunar year (called " finished moon ") was devoted to rest.
The date of the equinoctial feast was fixed by observation of the shadow
of a pillar in the centre of a circle, with a line across from west to east ;
places of observation where the shadow was shortest, or within the equinoc
tial line, were the most sacred. Some of the stones in the fortress of
Cuzco measured twelve or sixteen feet in length ; Garcilasso believed they
were not quarried, but natural blocks laid together and worked at the joints
so as to fit exactly. The fortifications themselves were arranged " with a
degree of skill nowhere else to be met with in any work of fortification an
terior to the invention of gunpowder, and including a fortification en tenaille."
The terracing of mountains for tillage had been carried in Peru to the
highest possible degree of perfection ; ° other fields were levelled and
squared for irrigation ; the terraces were watered by an elaborate system of
aqueducts, and where there were neither rivers nor surface springs to feed
irrigation canals, like the Arabs and Persians, the Incas made subterranean
channels to springs as much as forty feet underground. All arable land
1 Royal Commentaries on the Yncas, pp. 93, 308, 9.
- Huayna Ccapac, after conquering Quitu, is said to have married the king's daughter,
" who would have been heiress of the kingdom."
3 I.e., i. p. 227 ; ii. p. 92.
* i- P- 177-
5 History of the New World called America. E. J. Payne (1892), p. 340.

APPENDICES 455
was divided into three parts — one for the Sun, one for the king, and one for
the people. " When the people of a village or province increased in
numbers, a portion was taken from the lands of the Sun and of the Inca
for the vassals. Thus the king only took for himself and for the Sun such
lands as would otherwise remain desert and without an owner." 1 Besides
the irrigated maize lands, that where other crops were raised, without irriga
tion, was cultivated on the same principle, only with intervals of fallow.
Only maize lands, irrigated and manured, were cropped every year.
After tilling the fields of the Sun, they did those of the poor, — widows,
orphans, the sick or aged ; — the officers of the village looked after this,
summoning the villagers by trumpet to work on such lands in their neigh
bourhood ; the labourers received no pay in such cases ; the families of
soldiers on a campaign were also provided for in this way. Then the
people tilled their own lands, assisting each other ; then the lands of the
Curaca, or local chief, lastly those of the Inca. They were wont to sing as
they ploughed for king and Sun. Each householder had one tupu of land
— a little over an acre — for himself and wife, and an additional tupu for
every son, and half that for each daughter. The sons as they marry take
ihe tupu, and the father gives it up. It was not allowed to buy or sell land.
In the guano islands each village and province had its plot marked out and
was not allowed to encroach on the others, while each villager had an
allowance suited to his lands. The allotments of the householders paid no
tax. The tribute of the common people was to cultivate the lands of the Sun
and the Inca, and to gather the harvests and store them in the granaries
kept in each village. These granaries (called pirua) were built to hold
given measures of corn, and had openings by which the corn taken out was
measured. There were two storehouses in every village — one containing
grain against years of famine, the other the crops of the Sun and the Inca.
The latter for fifty leagues round Cuzco were used for the support of the
Court, and outside this circuit, crops were conveyed to royal granaries and
storehouses on the roads, for the supply of the soldiers, who were not allowed
to take anything from villages while on march.2 Lodgings for travellers
were placed at intervals along high-roads. Priests were maintained while on
duty at the temple in weekly rotation, out of estates of the Sun, and at
other times received lands to till, like the rest of the people. The store
houses of the Sun served as a reserve for the Inca in emergencies.
They gave the name of the " common law " to that which obliged the
able-bodied Indians to work on roads, bridges, palaces, etc.3 They called
the " brotherly law " that which compelled the inhabitants of every village
to help each other in getting in the harvest, building houses, and similar
work without pay ; and it was said to be " a very ancient custom among
them to work together, not only on public lands, but also on their own." l
1 L.c, vol. ii. p. 5. " lb., ii. 23.
8 H; P- 33- ' Ib-> P- 2o6,

4S6 APPENDICES.
There was a law which they called "mitachanacuy," which means "to take
turns according to families " to do the share of public work allotted to each
village, family, or person. " This law also ordained that three or four times
a month all the inhabitants of each village should feast together . . .
another law ordained that strangers should be treated as guests, and public
houses were provided for them . . . the same law decreed that all the
poor should be invited to the public banquets two or three times a month,
that in the universal rejoicings they might forget their own misery."
Hunts, like gigantic battues, were organized at set seasons;1 noxious
animals were killed ; huanacas and vicunas shorn, and the flesh of other
animals divided amongst the people. The provinces were divided into
three or four parts, of vvhich one only was hunted each year in succession,
to let the fleeces grow and the other game multiply. The Incas said the
game should be made as profitable as tame flocks ; and the common people
as a rule only obtained flesh through these hunts. The people exchanged
one article of food for another, but " neither sold clothes nor houses nor
estates," and knew nothing of renting, buying, or selling.
The artizans paid tribute in kind, making cloth, shoes, arms, etc., each
district paying tribute according to its produce. Under twenty-five and
over fifty no tribute was exacted from the men, and the women paid none
at all. Gold and silver were only collected when the people had nothing
else to do. The extraction of quicksilver was forbidden as hurtful, as it
caused those who worked it to tremble and lose their feeling.3 The
pearl fisheries were not worked by the Incas on account of the danger to
the divers. Miners worked for two months of the year as their tribute ;
and if extra services were given one year, a corresponding time was de
ducted in the next year. Salt, fish, fruit, cotton, and other produce were
dealt with in common, but trees planted on private lands were enjoyed by
the occupier. Roads, bridges, and canals were repaired annually.
Domestic industries were practised by every one, and there was little
specialization of occupation. Beggars were unknown.
The knots used in counting served for figures, as there might be nine
strings bearing up to nine knots each, placed one under the other, just like
the figures on a slate for an addition sum, the value of each knot being
shown by its place. The people in charge of the knots preserved tradi
tional sentences and speeches by memory.3 "Sententious sentences" of
the ninth Inca, Pachacutec, were preserved by tradition. He increased
the schools founded by Inca Rocca, and ordered the language of Cuzco to
be taught throughout the kingdom ; and he is also said to have caused
storehouses to be built in all villages, large and small, where supplies might
be kept for succouring tbe people in time of scarcity, such depots to be
filled from the crops of the Inca and the Sun.4
Comment on such a list of institutions is unnecessary ; and sceptical
1 L.c, ii. pp. 1 15-7. 2 lb., pp. 21, 413, 404.
3 ii. p. 124. 4 lb., p. 201.

APPENDICES. 457
criticism is uncalled for also, because, whatever difficulty the Inca Garci
lasso may have had in excluding from his mind all the effects of his half-
breed's education, all the above traditions represent what he must have
gleaned " from the mothers " of his friends, and his own relations on the
mother's side, as the inventions of the Spaniards would take a totally
different direction.

APPENDIX G.
Vol. i.,p. 553.
Report of the Malabar Marriage Commission.
When first examining into the eccentricities of Egyptian marriage settle
ments, the writer had no thought of a possible practical bearing for the
historical speculation ; and it may appear somewhat incongruous to append
to the preceding summary of ancient law and history the discussion of
anything so modern as a Bill, to be called The Malabar Marriage Act,
two proposals for which have been laid before the Madras Government in
the last ten years. But, though the shade of Mencius forbids us to study
history for the sake of " profit," it is not necessary to close our eyes to the
light which, on rare occasions, disinterested historical inquiries may cast
on questions of practical politics. We have taught gentlemen who sign
themselves Nair and Menon to quote Bentham and John Stuart Mill as
well as Parasu Rama in their legislative proposals ; and, as the countrymen
of the two first-named authors have taken upon themselves the responsi
bility of legislating for a people, to whom the latter name is naturally the
more sacred of the three, it is clearly desirable that the European lawgiver
should understand the history and ethics of the Malabar problem, at least
not more imperfectly than the descendants of Malabar Warriors and Scribes
understand English Utilitarianism.
The demand for an Act " to provide a form of marriage for Hindus
following the Marumakkatayam law of succession, and to provide for the
maintenance of the wives and children after the performance of such
marriages," has arisen because there are now natives of Malabar, especially
in the Government service, who earn a professional income which enables
them to maintain their wives and children without assistance from family
property ; and who are desirous of bequeathing their savings from such
earnings to their own wife or children, rather than to their mothers and
sisters and sisters' children, who are now by local custom their legal heirs.
In 1884 a draft Act for this purpose was prepared by Mr. Logan, whose
standard work is quoted from in the text (vol. i. p. 553) upon this very
subject As no action was taken upon his proposal, its details need not
be discussed. In recognition, however, of the demand for some action in
this direction, a Commission was appointed in May, 1891, to take evi
dence —
"(a) As to the customs connected with Hindu marriages in Malabar;
458

APPENDICES. 459
(b) As to whether the proposed changes are desired by the majority of
the classes subject to the Marumakkathayam law,
(c) Or are essential for the protection of the minority ;
(d) Whether legislation is expedient,
(if) And if so what form it should take ;
(/) Whether the measure would affect the religion, or the religious rites
and usages of the Marumakkathayam classes ;
(g) What would be its effect upon the people of the neighbouring States
of Cochin and Travancore,
(h) And upon the people governed by the Aliyasantana law."
Witnesses selected from the Marumakkatayam classes (i.e. those follow
ing sisters' sons' inheritance) were examined to the number of 322,
including representatives of the Kovilagams, or princely families of the
country. The written answers of 64 witnesses and the viva voce evidence
of 121 witnesses are printed at length in the report published by the Com
mission, which may be recommended as a mine of information for the social
anthropologist. The Commission consisted of a Judge of the High Court,
Mr. Muttusami Aiyar, Mr. H. M. Winterbotham, Collector of Malabar,
the Hon. Sankaran Nair, the author of the Bill discussed, and three
other native gentlemen, two holding the office of District Munsiff, and the
other a member of the Parapanad Kovilagam.
The Bill drafted by Mr. Sankaran Nair (on the same lines as that of
Mr. Logan) proposes to legalize marriages between followers of the
Marumakkatayam law of succession upon the following conditions : —
(1) Neither party must, at the time of the marriage, have a wife or
husband living.
(2) The man must have completed the age of 18 years, and the woman
the age of 14 years.
(3) Each party must, if under 21, have obtained the consent of his or
her legal guardian to the marriage.
(4) The relation of the parties must not be such in respect of con
sanguinity or affinity that, according to any recognised custom, a marriage
between them would be improper. (This is neutralised by the two follow
ing provisos, vvhich will be referred to later.)
Then follow a variety of formalities for giving notice of a proposed
marriage to the registrar, and for the " solemnization " of the marriage
in his presence and that of three witnesses, with any forms desired,
provided each party "says to the other in the presence and hearing of the
registrar and the witnesses, ' I (A.) take thee (B.) to be my lawful wife
(or husband).'" A large part of the remainder of the Draft deals with
" Matrimonial Suits " under four heads — Decree of Nullity, Of Dissolution
in case of absence, For Divorce or Judicial separation, For Restitution of
conjugal rights — all more or less of the European, not to say British
pattern. The last material portion confers the following civil rights on
parties married under the Act. The husband becomes ipso facto the
guardian of his wife and children ; the latter are entitled to claim mainten-

460 APPENDICES.
ance from the husband, while retaining their rights as members of their
tarwad. The wife becomes legal guardian of the children after the father's
death ; the self-acquired property of either husband or wife, if they die
intestate, shall devolve on the survivor and the children of the marriage,
and failing them on the tarwad. Both husband and wife, if of full age
and sound mind, may dispose of their separate and self-acquired property
by will, with the proviso that the wife and children are entitled first to a
sufficient share of the husband's property to provide them with suitable
maintenance. In justice to the author of this Bill, which is not acceptable to any section
of his countrymen, it should be explained that it was drafted under the belief
" that in the present state of English public opinion, a proposal to recog
nise caste as an obstacle to marriage, and to permit free divorce, is not
within the field of practical politics." So that the Bill represents, not the
spontaneous wish either of the whole people or of the " English educated "
minority, but an approximate guess, by a member of that minority, how
much of what they want their rulers will allow them to have.
On the suggestion of the President, the following were accepted as the
chief points for notice in connection with the reference : —
(a) Conditions of a valid marriage.
(b) The form that ought to be recognised.
(c) Registration as evidence of an agreement to be governed by the act.
(d) Divorce; grounds of divorce ; tribunal.
(e) Rights and obligations to be attached to the legal form of marriage.
Memoranda were prepared by each member of the Commission and
read at their second meeting, from which it appeared that they were
unanimous in replying to the second question of the reference in the nega
tive, i.e. that in their opinion no change in their marriage customs is
desired by the majority of persons following Marumakkatayam. With
regard to question c, four out of five of the Commissioners agree that
legislation is desirable to meet the needs of the educated and progressive
minority, and the dissenting member considers such legislation necessary
" in case the Courts refuse to recognise the existing social marriages as
legal and binding marriages, creating the rights and obligations described
by him in his Memorandum."
This remark illustrates the initial difficulty of the problem. The late
Sir Fitz-James Stephen is quoted as saying : " Most people regard marriage
as a contract and something more; but I never yet heard of any one who
denied that it is at all events a contract, and by far the most important of
all contracts." The Majority report of the Commission proceeds: "A
contract is an agreement enforceable by law (Contract Act ix. of 1872, § 2),
and if we can discover such an agreement in the form of nuptial union
sanctioned by Marumakkathayam custom, we shall have ascertained that
there is a Marumakkathayam marriage, and not otherwise."
Now if this proposition were of world-wide application, it would be
extremely doubtful whether the ancient Egyptians were married to their

APPENDICES.

461

wives; and it is not even certain that the millennial marriage customs of the
Chinese would satisfy the terms of Contract Act ix. 1872. The marriage
Contracts of later Egypt were all in effect marriage Settlements ; and the
Syrian distinction between " marriages with writings " and those without
seems to point to a similar difference. But not even the Roman Praitor
went the length of saying that persons married without writings were not
married at all. An ancient Egyptian might have a wife without entering
into " an agreement enforced by law," but if he wished to arrange for the
transmission of his property to his own and his wife's children, he had to
execute a marriage settlement for that purpose.
If the educated minority in Malabar had had an "Egyptian" instead of
an English education, they might have met the difficulties of their case by
executing marriage settlements, which the Courts would have been obliged
to recognise as Contracts. But even if this remedy had occurred to them,
it is doubtful whether it would be effectual now, in the face of a strong and
well-meant desire on the part of the Courts to uphold another portion of
the customary law of the country. The English have been accused in
some parts of India of breaking up the "joint, undivided families " of the
Hindus, by an excessive readiness to recognise the rights of individuals,
apart from the groups of ancient tradition. And by way of avoiding this
reproach, they have, in Malabar, to some extent laid themselves open to
another ; viz., that of arresting a tendency to substitute the tavazhi, or
natural maternal family, for the tarwad or larger group with a common
ancestress. All family property, unless formally divided by deed, is now
held to be tarwad property; and marriage settlements of self-acquired
property might be set aside by the Courts as an infringement of the rights
of tarwads.
The natives of Malabar are thus, through no fault or failing of their own,
dependent on the goodwill and intelligence of English legislation to enable
them to transmit their property to the children born to them in mono
gamous unions, contracted in accordance with all the social and religious
proprieties recognised in their country. And the discussion of their
demands is, after all, scarcely a digression from the subject of the present
work, as much of the information embodied in the Report of the Com
mission throws fresh and valuable light on the significance and origin of
various archaic traits already met with.
The marriage customs of the natives of Malabar are in some respects
less advanced than those of Egypt, owing to historical circumstances,
which are to some extent assignable. The natural evolution of the family
continued undisturbed in Egypt, and the combined influence of family
affection and proprietary interests made marriage and liberal marriage
settlements the rule, in a country with a primitively lax standard of sexual
morality.1 There is practically no doubt that the ancient native custom
of Malabar approached to that of the Nabataeans and of the modern
Unlike the Chinese classics, a considerable proportion of Egyptian texts are de
scribed as untranslatable.

462 APPENDICES.
Tibetans ; while the earliest records of Egypt give no hint at such a stage
having been passed through, except in the recognition of real or imaginary
marriages with sisters, evidently due to some notion of the special fitness
of a sister to be installed as " Lady of the House."
Without a circumstantial description of modern Malayali custom, we
should find it difficult to realize what the so-called " sister's son's inherit
ance " really means. We will suppose Khrishna and Lakshmi (the baron
a.ndfemeo( India) to be members respectively of a large tarwad, descended
from Lakshmi's great-great-great-grandmother, and of a small tavazhi
or branch family, either separated from an overgrown tarwad, or sole
representative of one which has died out. Khrishna therefore has been
brought up in a household consisting of his mother, one or two of his
mother's brothers, and his own brothers and sisters ; if he is a native
of Northern Malabar, the family will also have included his brothers'
children, while, if he lives in Southern Malabar, it will have included his
sisters' children only. Whether the family group be large or small,
the members of either sex within it take their meals together; and,
whether the children of a marriage are brought up in their father's or their
mother's family, it is usual for long visits to be paid to the other house
hold, and it is therefore desirable, in choosing a consort, to choose one
who can, in accordance with caste rules, eat with the persons of the same
sex in the family of the other spouse.
Lakshmi's father only visits his wife and children occasionally, and the
master of the household, and her legal guardian, the Karnavan, is pro
bably a great-uncle or distant cousin, who takes no personal interest in her,
beyond reckoning her as one of those for whom rice must be provided at
the women's table, and a husband found in due season. The girls and
women of a large tarwad are kept apart from the males, with whom, how
ever remote the relationship, marriage is absolutely forbidden; conse
quently the only man, before her marriage, with whom she can have any
natural intercourse, is a brother of her own. If Khrishna's father also lives
in his own tarwad, apart from his wife, Khrishna's sisters will grow up in
the habit of regarding him as " the man of the house ; " and, as his mother
looks to his uncles to do her business outside the family, and look after
the family property, from which the undivided household lives, so Khrishna
grows up in the habit of considering himself responsible for the material
support of his mother and sisters when his uncle dies. And while the
uncle lives, it is probably to Khrishna that they would have to apply, if
the uncle showed signs of postponing their interests in any way to those
of his own children.
The archaic preference of the brother to the husband, the special regard
for the mother's brother, and the separation of the sexes at meals (known
as a Carian, Basque, and Cretan custom), all originate in a system of
domestic organization akin to that of modern Malabar, and we see how
the "companionship of the cupboard" gives a natural vitality to an
apparently artificial system of inheritance ; so that, at the present moment,

APPENDICES. 46 }
while men wish to be allowed to leave property to their children, none of
them would be content to be compelled to leave it away from their mother
and sisters. If Khrishna is poor and Lakshmi rich, they would both think
it right for their children to be brought up in her tarwad, and for him to
give what little he might earn, for the maintenance of his mother and
sisters, even though the latter were married and had children. And,
under the circumstances, we cannot say that there is anything unnatural or
absurd in the feeling. The mother's property maintains the son, and the
son's earnings go to the support of the mother and her other descendants.
The hard case, for which relief is sought, is that of a wealthy Khrishna,
— probably with an English education and a salary from Government,
which passes for wealth, — who has married, perhaps before obtaining a
salary, some poor Lakshmi, whose family, if she is left a widow with
children, can barely supply her and them with food. If Khrishna is an
affectionate and thoughtful husband, he will probably buy some small
property in the name of his wife or her brother, and so enable her to
provide for their children ; but if he dies prematurely, or, like the English
professional man who puts off insuring his life, does not take his precau
tions in time, his wife may be either left destitute or endowed with the
damnosa htzreditas of a law-suit with his tarwad.
When a new Marriage Law is spoken of, the uneducated classes, we are
told, at once assume that it is proposed to compel them to give up
Marumakkatayam and become Makkatayam x men, to vvhich they object
unanimously. " But," says one witness, " do not stop your inquiry here.
Ask him (the uneducated man), ' Have you no wife ? Are you not
married to her ? ' ' Yes ; I have a wife and I am married to her.' ' Is it
proper or good that you or she should discard each other, as either of you
wish?' 'Of course not; that is not our mariada (custom).' 'Are you
not bound to maintain your wife and children? ' ' Yes ; and we do it ! '
' Don't you give a portion of your self-acquisitions to them ? ' ' Yes.'
' Have you any objection to have these customs declared as your law in
an Act of the Government ? ' 'If this is all, it is very good.' "
In the comparatively rare case of family property being left without an
heir to claim it, the lawful course under Marumakkatayam is to adopt a
sister, whose child will be heir, vvhich seems absurd to European ideas.
But it is extremely likely that the Egyptian wife, who is called a sister
without being one by birth, was primitively adopted in that character, so
that her children might receive their father's inheritance, before the custom
of writing marriage settlements was formed. And there is thus nothing
on the face of it to explain why native Malabar custom has failed to
establish monogamy as a national institution in the way that was done
in Egypt.
The fact seems to be that two alien influences, Hindu and European,
have interfered with the natural development of the Malabar family on
either Basque or Egyptian lines. The Nambutiri or Malabar Brahmins,
1 Son's inheritance.

464 APPENDICES.
who very probably belong, like the Nairs, to the pre-Aryan population,1
originally practised polyandry of the Nabataean type, the eldest son alone
being entitled to lawful marriage. Other Brahmins, called Pattars, are
looked down upon in Malabar, and are only regarded as acceptable
husbands when nothing better is to be had. Such a feeling is inconsistent
with a real community of origin between the Brahmins of Malabar and the
rest of India, in contradistinction to the other inhabitants of the former
district. And it seems probable that a polyandrous, priestly caste of
Mallas has borrowed the Brahminical pretensions of the Hindu priestly
caste, and imposed upon the Nairs, — who, as the warriors of the country,
should by analogy be called Kshatriyas rather than Sudras — a curious
revelation ascribed to Parasu Rama, which has had the effect of perpetu
ating the laxity of Malabar marriage custom.
The learned Zamorin, Maharajah Bahadur, of Calicut, quotes the
following passage from a discourse between Garga and Yudhistira in Kerala
Mahatmiam : " In this Kerala, only one member of a Brahmin Tarawad
shall marry. The eldest son shall marry in preference to the others. It
is not necessary that the females of Samanthams, Sudras, and others
should observe the rule of chastity. But the rule of chastity should be
observed by the Brahmin females only. I truly say that the above rule
need not be observed by the females of non-Brahmin castes." This passage,
vvhich reminds unbelievers of the less admirable revelations of Mahomet, is
put forward by a number of Conservative witnesses, who are at the same
time opposed to legislation, indignant at the suggestion that they are not
married to their own wives, and certainly prepared to take mortal offence
at the barest hint at the possibility of its being supposed that the ladies
of their own families are intended to avail themselves of the dispensation
accorded by Parasu Rama.
What happened when the Nairs were not, as now, practically mono
gamous is as if the Basques had found an aboriginal race in Spain, which
was taught to reverence them as the Indians did the Incas, and as if then
the Basque householders, instead of condemning their cadets to celibacy,
had allowed them to marry the aborigines, but not to bequeath any
property to the children of such marriages. " Custom," it is further observed
by the Zamorin, " is regarded to be the foremost among the Agamas
(revelations). The origin of all the virtues is custom, and the eternal God
is the Lord of all the virtues." So mighty a god is custom, especially
when allied with religion, that vice and virtue may be confounded at his
bidding. Custom in China prescribes lawful marriages, and lawful marriages
are universal. Custom in ancient Egypt bade a man love his wife
unmixedly, and the walls of the eternal dwelling-places record his delight
in the affection of the lady of his house. In Malabar— as has so often
happened in Europe— the dictates of natural morality and the precepts of
what is taken for religion now pull opposite ways. Among respectable
1 Not, of course, to the dark-skinned, low castes of ancient India, but to some branch
of a pre-Aryan white race, with whom civilization seems to have begun.

APPENDICES. 465
people men and women do not practise polygamy. Life-long marriages
are common, and it is the exception for the absolute liberty of divorce
possessed on both sides to be abused by repeated and motiveless separa
tions ; and it is probable that if the natives of Malabar were left to their
own devices, these new customs would rank as an Agama, and Panchayats
and Tarvvads would find means to punish their violators.
But at this point the second disturbing element appears. European'
influence has to some extent accelerated the natural process of develop
ment by causing the whole " English educated " class to feel uncomfortable'
under the imputation of living under a laxer marriage law than other civilized
communities; and it might have been supposed that the alien professors
of monogamy would welcome and hasten to record the social progress of
the subject race under their protection. But the Indian Government has
contracted a fixed habit of respecting the religious Agamas of its subjects,
however eccentric ; and there is therefore some excuse for its hesitating to'
legislate before ascertaining by direct inquiry whether the domestic usages-
of modern Malabar are such as are sanctioned by Kerala Mahatmiam or"
not — whether, in fact, Malabar is governed by what Europe regards as an
immoral religious law, or by spontaneously moral custom, unsupported
by the sanctions of the civil power.
But for this uncertainty, for which English rule is not to blame, it would
be rather startling, and indeed shocking, to find the English Government,
while desiring to raise the standard of social propriety, giving offence to
the social prejudices of respectable citizens, who have married wives
according to the most proper customs of their country, ^by asking
questions which imply that they are perhaps not married at all. Some of
the native witnesses even object, as to a slightly coarse, vulgar, or jocose
expression, to the words used by the Commissioners ' as the nearest equi
valent available for husband and marriage. And others resent the mere
putting of the question on the most important issue of fact before the
Commission. That issue is raised by the interrogatories 23, 24, 27, 28 : Can a woman
have Sambandham with as many men as she pleases at the same time ?
Is this permitted or prohibited, and in either case where can such a
permission or prohibition be found ? Can a man have Sambandham in
more than one house at the same time? If he chooses, is there anything
to prevent it? Some of the witnesses resent the mere putting of the
questions, and some who refrain from answering them, probably do so on
the ground of their indecorum. An analysis of over 50 answers probably
gives a faithful reflection of the present state of fact and feeling.
To the questions relating to women three answer with a plain Yes,
there is nothing to prevent her. Eleven answer with a plain No, she
cannot. Five say it is not unlawful, but it is not respectable ; it is thought
unbecoming. Eight distinguish, and say it is unknown in Northern
Sambandhakaran and Sambandham. Sambandham = connexion, especially the con
nexion of husband and wife. '
VOL. II. — p.c. H H

466 APPENDICES.
Malabar, though heard of formerly in Southern Malabar (where a legend
of one woman with 28 sambandhakarans at a time is talked of). Fifteen
others speak of the practice as very rare, dying out, a thing formerly
known, but now unheard of, though not prohibited. Six speak of it as
restricted to the lower orders in Southern Malabar, and not approved of
even among them. And five answer :
Certainly not.
Of course not.
No ; the facility of divorce has given rise to the erroneous idea.
I am surprised that the question should have been asked.
No. This question is not at all warranted by anything connected with
the Nayar marriage custom.
The answers to the companion questions are as follows : thirty-two give.
a plain Yes. One adds : "The general Hindu law is in his favour;" and
these answers all seem, like the affirmatives in the first case, to apply to
the strict letter of the interrogatory. There is nothing in the civil or
religious law of Malabar to prevent it ; and in Northern Malabar especially,
there appears to be a section of the people who would rather alter the
local custom in the direction of ordinary Hinduism and polygamy than
towards European monogamy. These witnesses can be recognised by
their desire to minimize the right of women to divorce, which is certainly an
essential part of the old national custom. Twelve answer that it is not
illegal, but it is not respectable, no respectable man wishes to do it ; it is
theoretically lawful but practically unknown ; it can be done subject to social
odium, or to the difficulty of finding a family that will consent to let one of
its women marry a man who has a wife living andundivorced. Some say : it
is done against all propriety, or that, if done, the second wife is regarded
as a mistress. One says that it is prohibited by custom for men as much
as for women ; and this witness adds : It is commoner in Northern Mala
bar, where the women are less educated, less refined and independent than
in the south ; and, as the taking a second wife is generally recognised
(as it was in ancient Egypt) as giving the first wife a sufficient reason for
divorcing, it is clear that the customary independence of women must have
worked in favour of the rule of one wife — or husband — at a time.
The Commissioners did not take the evidence of any women, though it
would not be impossible to do so, as the elder women of a family are
allowed to speak to strangers, and the senior ladies of the Kovilagams, in
which traditions of gynaecocracy linger, are regarded as authorities on
point of social decorum. But even without their evidence, the practice of
the Minicoy islanders and the nature of things make it practically certain
that the well-born women of Malabar would oppose, with all the irresistible
resources of their conservative sex, any proposal to legalize Hindu poly
gamy, though indeed no such is seriously made by Malabar gentlemen.
When we consider that the list of witnesses includes many entirely
opposed to the suggested legislation or to any interference with native
custom, and that native theologians are bound by the dictum ascribed to

APPENDICES. 467
Parasu Rama, it is evident that the practice of polyandry is virtually
extinct in Northern Malabar and among the upper classes of Southern
Malabar, and that it is dying out and discountenanced everywhere. It is
believed even by the opponents of European legislation that if a new
Marriage Law is passed, even those who do not like it will marry under it,
rather than lie under the stigma of not wishing to be as much married as
possible ; it is also prophesied that any legislation effected in this direction in
Malabar will be copied in the adjoining native States of Cochin and Travan-
core and in Canara, where a transitional law called Aliyasantana is in force.
It is therefore plain that a serious responsibility attaches to the English
Government, which has the power to accelerate and secure a natural step
of social progress and give the coup de grace to an unseemly anachronism.
But, if native opinion among men and women alike is in favour of a law
legitimating monogamous marriage, it is difficult to see how or why the
attempts to give effect to this laudable purpose have been hung up for ten
years. What is the difficulty in the way of legitimating the de facto mono
gamous unions now existing in the country, and those contracted day by
day, with customary rites and a full intention of permanence ?
Before attempting to answer this question, we must analyse the answers
given to another interrogatory : " Is it the custom to change ' Samband
ham ' frequently, or is it the rule for one man and woman to cleave toge
ther for life ? " Ten of the witnesses answer simply that it is the rule for
the parties to cleave together for life ; six say that this is the rule, but
there are exceptions ; one that it is the rule in 999 cases out of 1,000 ; ten
say that it is not customary to change frequently ; one that the power to
change prevents the wish arising ; others that the custom of changing
frequently is declining, that it is rare in Northern Malabar, rare in respect
able families, rare now, that unprincipled men change and honourable ones
do not; that "the majority of the present generation cleave together for
life in perfect harmony;" while others speak of permanence as the rule,
failing good cause for divorce ; " it is not proper to divorce without cause."
Four say : "A man can do as he likes ; " " It is at the will and pleasure
of each individual ; " " There is nothing to prevent either party divorcing
if bent on it," or " if enmity takes the place of love."
The question as to what are considered reasonable grounds of divorce
is discussed at length in the answers to other questions, bearing on the
provisions for divorce in the proposed Bill ; and there is a general consensus
of opinion among the natives that infidelity on either side, failure of the
man to give reasonable maintenance or of the woman to obey reasonable
commands, incurable and repulsive disease, conviction for crime, barren
ness in the wife and intemperance or similar bad habits in the husband,
complete incompatibility of temper and, perhaps, a serious feud between
the families, are regarded as valid grounds ; while separation for frivolous
reasons is prevented by the custom which makes the consent of the elders
of the families usual in both cases and practically indispensable in the case
of women. Some witnesses attribute the generally high standard of matri-

468 APPENDICES.
monial happiness to the liberty of divorce, which causes both parties to
continue on their best behaviour, and there is some agreement as to the
exceptional attractiveness of the women of South Malabar, which makes
the husband more anxious to retain the affections of his own wife than
to be at liberty to take another. The whole picture is perhaps a little
overladen with couleur de rose, but we gather that a majority of the whole
population in Northern Malabar and of the upper classes in Southern
Malabar enter into what is virtually a contract of marriage during life or
good behaviour, and that the great majority of such married couples
remain faithful to each other, in spite of their legal right to separate at the
wish of either one. We gather also that the virtuous majority are pre
pared to accept legislation, restricting divorce in cases where there is no
assignable cause, except that one of the spouses has got tired of the other ;
and of course it is obvious that the obligation to provide for the wife or the
children of a former marriage, dissolved by the husband's default, would
operate still further in restraint of change.
Now whether the witnesses exaggerate or not the extent to which the
archaic laxity of South Indian custom has become a thing of the past,
they agree in wishing to have the marriages that they do in fact enter into
recognised as binding legal contracts ; and under these circumstances, it
cannot be the duty of the English Government to thrust them back upon
the uncovenanted mercies of Parasu Rama. To the legal European mind,
there are two things wanting to Malabar marriages, that the law should
recognise the terms of the contracts so as to be able to enforce its fulfil
ment, and that this power should not be rendered nugatory by including
in the contract itself a provision making it revocable at will. On the
other hand, it is highly important, in the interest of morals and the insti
tution of marriage, that the new legal contract should be made as easy,
attractive, and popular as possible, so that the obligations it imposes may
be generally and willingly incurred.
The Bill of Mr. Sankaran Nair, which we may criticise without scruple,
as the clauses in it which are objectionable to his countrymen were doubt
less only inserted to facilitate its adoption by the English Government, is
opposed on the following grounds : It proposes to create a form of mar
riage for the population of Malabar ; a proposal which is a gratuitous
offence to every respectable married couple in the country, and is needless,
as there are six or seven well-known forms of marriage in use in various
classes and localities, one or other of which would be acceptable to every
native desirous of marrying under the Act. The form proposed is also
objected to in itself. Both men and women, it is said, would think the
formula in the draft improper, not to say immodest, and there is an uni
versal objection to the appearance of the bride in public, before an official
of uncertain caste. One gentleman whose command of English idiom
leaves nothing to be desired says : " I do not see the fun of constituting
the Sub-Registrar our marriage High Priest," and this sentiment may be
taken as universal.

APPENDICES. 469
An alternative, which would satisfy English misgivings and native sus
ceptibilities, may be proposed : that a few discreet and learned representa
tives of all classes should be invited to draw up a report describing the
various forms of marriage in use, which it is desirable for the Government
to recognise as legal. As they vary in cheapness as well as solemnity, it
is important that at least one very simple, informal rite should be legal
ized. It should then be made the business of some person, officiating at
each form of marriage, to forward a notification of it to the registrar,
specifying the form used, and forwarding the signature of witnesses on a
Government form. Application for the form would be a notice of the
proposed marriage, and any falsification of such documents would be an
offence under the Penal Code. No change would be necessary in the mar
riage rites of the people, but those who wished to make the marriage
agreement a legal contract, " enforceable by law," would do so by the mere
fact of having their marriage registered. There can be no motive for the
registration of imaginary marriages, and the recommendation of the Chair
man of the Commission, repeated by all the more intelligent witnesses,
seems absolutely unobjectionable -. " The new Act should purport to
legalize the existing forms of social marriage, and not to provide a new
form of civil marriage."
The next objection is to a proviso that no bar to marriage save consan
guinity and affinity shall be recognised, and these only between parties
related "through some common ancestor, who stands to each of them in a
nearer relationship than that of great-great-grandfather or great-great-grand
mother, or unless one of the parties is the lineal ancestor or the brother or
sister of some lineal ancestor, of the other." The restrictions on marriage
are very numerous and stringent in Malabar, but it is not in accordance
with English precedent to attack established custom in such matters as
caste observances, and it is clearly unnecessary to weight a Bill for legaliz
ing existing marriages with provisions sanctioning unions now thought
wrong or improper. It is as if, in a country like Spain or Russia, it were
proposed for the first time to legalize the marriage of Anglo-Catholics, and
the law giving that measure of relief went on to legalize marriage with a
deceased wife's sister. In Malabar it is not lawful to marry any relative oi
a deceased wife — i.e. any member of her Tarwad. And there are real
reasons of social expediency at the bottom of all such customary prohibi
tions, in communities where the group living in close domestic association
is not limited to the natural family. Supposing — par Cimpossible — that
China were included in the British Empire, should we refuse to recognise
the legality of Chinese marriages, because it is unlawful, throughout the
length and breadth of the Flowery Land, for a Chinese Smith to marry
a Smith, or a Brown a Brown ?
In all parts of India there are restrictions on marriage which appear
needless and useless to Europeans, and it would be quite reasonable and
logical to declare that any native of the country who had adopted European
ideas on the matter should be free to contract a valid civil marriage, " with

47° APPENDICES.
the Registrar for his high priest." The Hindu, who does not believe in
the laws of caste, has as much right to enter upon marriage as a civil con
tract, as the English agnostic or secularist, who does not wish to be married
in church or chapel ; and it is one of the drolleries of Anglo-Indian legisla
tion that, — as I am informed, — an Indian rationalist cannot be married at
an English registry office unless he declares himself a convert to Christi
anity ! But in this respect Malabar will be no worse off than the rest of
India, and there is at present no demand for the legalization of any mar
riages except those which social and religious custom now regard as lawful.
The objections to the institution of a Divorce Court and public suits for
divorce, or for the restitution of conjugal rights, are, if possible, stronger
than those raised against the proposed form of marriage ; and the reader
who is fresh from the domestic atmosphere of Egypt and China will feel
the incongruity of setting up by law in a modern Lycia the machinery of
this kind which is treated as a necessary evil in Europe. The native wit
nesses are ready in their references to English scandals, from the Jackson
case onwards ; and the standard of morality, reached under the existing
marriage system, is to some extent vindicated by the fact that many of the
witnesses are in favour of retaining the existing equality of the sexes in the
matter of divorce. They propose to recognise other grounds of divorce
than infidelity, so as not to put a premium on the commission of that
offence, but they do not wish to deprive the women of their right to claim
release on that ground alone. In this no doubt they are wise, because it
is certain that women of wealth and position, whose example would have
most weight in the country, would decline to enter into marriages, which
they could not dissolve upon the ground hitherto considered sufficient.
One cannot make Griseldas by Act of Parliament, but the institution of
marriage is perfectly compatible with that of a simple and equal law of
divorce. And, even if divorce by mutual consent on the ground of in
compatibility of temper were recognised, there is no reason to fear that the
license would be abused. The respective Karnavans who have arranged
a marriage discourage its dissolution ; a person who advertised himself as
" gey ill to live with " by more than one divorce for "incompatibility"
would find himself unable to obtain a partner for a third attempt; and,
besides, as in Egypt, the rights of the first wife and children to main
tenance would operate powerfully to discourage second marriages of
any kind. If, as is probable, registered marriages came to be regarded as
more dignified and sacred than unregistered ones, and if, as is certain,
they were only entered into by the more respectable classes, divorce
would any way become less frequent than at present. And it is obviously
absurd to make the recognition of Malabar marriages conditional on the
adoption in the country of a divorce law of English rather than German or
American pattern.
The consent of the Karnavans, a year's notice, and a formal registration
of the motived application for divorce are the checks suggested by general
consent.

APPENDICES. 47 i
With regard to the age of marriage and the consent of guardians there
is no serious difficulty. Child marriage is not usual, and the financial
responsibilities associated with a legal marriage would not tend to lower
the customary age. Practically at present it is impossible for a marriage
to take place without the consent of the elders on both sides, because the
husband cannot obtain access to the wife without the consent of her
Karnavan, nor can she and her children receive their food in their hus
band's Tarwad, as is usual in North Malabar, without the consent of his
Karnavan. The consent of the Elders can only be dispensed with if the
husband is in a position to maintain his wife apart from the families of
both; and it would probably be acceptable if some form answering to the
French sommations respectueuses were provided, by which a young couple,
whose union was opposed by their elders, should have to wait for a mode
rate term, after giving notice of their wish to register the marriage, before
the contract could be completed.
One point appears to be very important ; that, at least for a certain term, —
preferably not less than twenty-five years, — it shall be open to any person
married according to ancient social custom, to register their past marriage
as legal. If they are in a position to do so, the date of the ceremony, the
form used, and the signatures of surviving witnesses might be filled in, upon
the ordinary registration form ; while for the poor or illiterate, who could
not give such details, it should suffice to register the marriage as previously
effected. It would clearly be unjust and invidious to draw a line between
the parties to a monogamous union of thirty or forty years' standing and a
young couple who merely hoped to enjoy the same permanent relationship.
And it would be unwise to fix any narrow limit of time for such retrospec
tive registrations, because after a few years it is certain that the legally
married will look down on the others ; and it is not desirable to create a
hard and fast line of demarcation between those who claim the benefit of
the Act at once, and those who delay doing so, from doubts or scruples,
legal or religious, not affecting the correctness of their domestic morals,
which experience of the working of the Act would remove. By such retro
spective registration the persons who now consider themselves married
would be put at once in the same position as if the Act had been passed
before their social marriage contract was formed ; and of course such regis
tration would "establish " the children as well as the wife in their full legal
rights. The criticism of the witnesses before the Commission naturally concen
trates itself on the points offensive to their religious and social susceptibi
lities, but there are other difficulties from which a study of comparative
jurisprudence might save the Malabar draftsman.
It is proposed, rather light-heartedly, as in accordance with Hindu and
English precedent, to make the husband legal guardian of his wife ; to
reserve the rights already possessed by the wife and children in her own
Tarwad, and to allow the wife to dispose by will of all her self-acquired pro
perty, — which is to include that which she may receive from her husband.

472 APPENDICES.
Now the Malayali are said to be a litigious people, and the only serious
opposition to a reasonable marriage law is that prompted by the fear that
any marriage law, carrying proprietary rights, will result in breaking up the
Tarwad properties. The Devvan of the native Cochin State remarks :
" The one principal advantage of Marumakattayam Law is the continuity
of wealth in Tarawads ; " and this claim is perfectly well founded, the Tar
wad having the same permanence as the Basque family estate ; and any
destitute descendant of the ancestress has an absolute right to receive the
necessaries of life out of it
It is not the intention of the English Government to disendow Tarwads
by a side-wind. But it is impossible to work two totally different legal
systems together. In the Tarwad system, the family property vests in the
woman, not to use, but to transmit. If she has a guardian at all, in regard
to proprietary interests, it is legally the Karnavan of her Tarwad and
naturally her mother's son. Hitherto, if the Karnavan chose to insist on
Lakshmi divorcing her husband, Khrishna had no remedy, because the
marriage was not an agreement enforceable by law. But after a legal regis
tered marriage, Khrishna would have a right to his wife's society, unless
she herself were entitled to a legal divorce ; and he would therefore not, as
a husband, be at the mercy of his wife's great-uncle. The Act also makes
him the legal guardian of his children, so that his personal status as hus
band and father is secured. The clause making him the legal guardian of
his wife can only have the effect of raising a conflict of interests, and per
haps of rights, between the husband and the wife's Karnavan, and should
be dropped as a mere matter of legal logic.
Whatever the social position of women may be in modern Malabar, the
conception of their legal tutelage is absolutely inconsistent with the national
system of inheritance. Theoretically, in Malabar, as in Egypt, Babylonia,
(and even in China), there are no limits to the civil competence of a
woman ; her share in the hereditary property of the family is limited as
that of a man is limited, she has the same power of dealing at discretion
during life with self-acquired property, and she is at present under the
same disability in bequeathing it away from the Tarwad when she dies. To
give a woman full testamentary powers over self-acquisitions, to place her
under her husband's guardianship, and to make gifts or bequests from him
count as self-acquisitions, would be to place every woman between two
fires, as the affectionate husband and brother complains of being now.
The husband might insist on her bequeathing to^w Tarwad gifts from her
own brothers, and her Karnavan would certainly claim that she should
bequeath to her Tarwad the gifts received from her husband, in view of
the obligation vvhich the Tarwad would still be under to maintain her and
her children during widowhood. The consequent dissatisfaction of the
" belongings " on both sides would go far to neutralize the gain from the
essential reforms contained in the Act.
One of the practical injustices of the present law is that, if a man has
tried to provide for his wife and children by a gift inter vivos, and they die

APPENDICES. 473
before him, what he has given them passes to their Tarwad, i.e. to a
grandmother, aunts, or cousins, instead of reverting to his own family.
The exceptional number of deeds of gift registered in the Marumakattayam
districts explains the copious provisions against such transactions in the
Gortyn, Syrian, and other semi-archaic codes, and the only way to
avoid burdening the statute law with a number of prohibitions, which
people spend their ingenuity in evading, is to make the provisions of the
common law as equitable or rather as equal as possible. To avoid set
ting up new injustices in the place of the old ones, the best way would
be to make the proprietary responsibilities of husband and wife absolutely
equal, so that every Tarwad shall have the same gains and losses, when,
as is usually the case now, they arrange two marriages at the same time,
each family giving a wife to the other, so as to balance the expense or
advantage incurred.
There is a general agreement among the witnesses that not more than
half the parent's self-acquisitions should go, on intestacy, to the consort
and children, but opinions are divided as to whether the remainder should
go to the Tavazhi or to the Tarwad. Some propose that one-third should
go to each of the three claimants, but the equitable course would seem
lobe that it should go according to the "companionship of the cup
board ; " i.e. that if the family had eaten rice with the Tavazhi, paid
for with Tavazhi funds, the Tavazhi should inherit, and if the Tarwad had
given maintenance, then the Tarwad should inherit.
The evidence as to the respective contributions of the family and the
husband to the support of the wife and children supplies a most eloquent
commentary on Egyptian marriage contracts. The common table supplies
food, but " oil and clothes " — it is universally agreed — should be supplied
by the husband. Even without the formality of written marriage settle
ments " he must give it," as the Egyptian documents say, or he may be
regarded as dissolving the marriage contract itself by his neglect.
An opponent of marriage legislation proposes, as an alternative, a Bill
to the effect that " every person whose personal law is the Marumakattayam
law, and who is of sound mind and not a minor, shall be competent to
dispose of his self-acquired separate property by will." But this is un
necessarily revolutionary. It is desirable to enable fathers to provide for
their children, even though their doing so reduces the amount of the
Tarwad's inheritance ; but it is not desirable that men should be empowered
to disinherit their Tarwad for the sake of women to whom they are not
respectably married : such an innovation would be like the Ptolemaic
legislation in Egypt, a way of combining the disadvantages of two separate
systems of jurisprudence.
Space forbids the enumeration of all points of interest contained in the
Report, but the following may claim a moment's notice. The distinction
between betrothal and marriage, met with elsewhere, seems to linger in
one peculiar marriage custom, in which the bridegroom asks the permission
of the mother of the bride to visit her for six months, and does in fact

474 APPENDICES.
spend the wedding night in the mother-in-law's house, returning (now)
the next day to fetch the wife home. There is an inexpensive form of
marriage with the peculiarity of not entitling the bride to be brought to
her husband's house, as if the " taking " had not been followed by the
" establishing" as wife. An institution discussed at great length, the Tali
kettu kalyanam, the tying of the tali on a girl before she attains maturity,
as a token of marriageableness, may possibly be a reminiscence of an
original religious betrothal ceremony ; but interested Brahministic sug
gestions have deprived it of this character, and it is now a useless, expen
sive, and meaningless ceremony, to the performance of which the con
servatism of the country is accordingly profoundly attached. One
advantage of a popular and dignified marriage rite is, that it might
gradually supersede the tali tying, or perhaps let that resume its place as a
real betrothal.
We are reminded of the foundation of Marseilles by the dictum of the
Zamorin : " The gift of daughters in marriage by the sacerdotal classes is
most approved when they have previously poured water into the hands of
the bridegroom."1 And we are reminded of the Nabataean and Syrian
formulas of succession by the sentence quoted from the Jimuthapahatha by
the same authority as applying even to those who follow the system of sons'
inheritance : " The properties of those who have no son, daughter's son, or
daughter's grandson shall descend to the sisters' children."
And we may fairly ask in return for so much curious information, that
anthropologists, who might be disposed to form a Society for the Protec
tion of Ancient Institutions, should show sufficient interest in the
grievances of Malayali parents to move the Madras Government to
proceed with a discreet and sympathetic Malabar Marriage Act.
One point should not be neglected — the selection of a dignified and
auspicious name for the nev legal contract. It is said that nearly the only
words that would be understood throughout Keralam as meaning "to
marry" are Sambandham Tudanguga—" To begin Sambandham;" but
they clearly do not satisfy the requirements of the case. Another term in
use is "Guna Dosham " — Good-bad-doing, — which is illustrated by reference
to the English " For better for worse" in the Marriage Service. What
seems wanted is a term including the ideas of auspicious life-long union
between the mother and father of children.2 A significant and alluring
name would go half-way towards popularizing the reform.
1 For this, however, there is a parallel in Manu.
2 The term karaina Sambandham has been suggested, karaina being already used to
denote a perpetual lease, and the selection of a further honorific adjective might be left
to the experts charged with the duty of reporting on the marriage rites to be recognized
as binding.

APPENDIX G bis.
Vol. ii., pp. II and 189.
Chinese Classics.
The five King or Canonical Books of China are the Yi King, or " Book
of Changes ; " 1 the Shoo, the Book of History ; the Shi, the Book of
Poetry; the Li Ki, or Record of Rites ; and the Ch'un T'sew, or Spring and
Autumn,2 a chronicle of events from 721 to 480 b.c. The compilation
of all these has been loosely attributed to Confucius, but the last alone
was really written by him. The Four Shoo or Books of the four philo
sophers consist of the sayings of Confucius (translated under the title of
Confucian Analects) and those of Mencius, and the Treatises called "The
Greater Learning " and the " Doctrine of the Mean," ascribed respectively
to a disciple and a grandson of Confucius ; but the two latter are included
also in the Record of Rites. To these were sometimes added the Chow
Li, or Rites of Chow, the E Li, or "Ceremonial Usages," and three com
mentaries on the Chun Tsew, of which the best by one Tso, called the
Tso Chuen, is translated by Dr. Legge. There is a great edition of the
Shoo, the Shi, the Sayings of Confucius and Mencius, and the Chun
Tsew, with Chinese text, translation and notes in seven parts or five
volumes by Dr. Legge (quoted throughout as Chinese Classics or C.C. );
and the English portion of the volumes on Mencius and Confucius have
also been reprinted in popular editions, and are generally referred to in
quotations as more easily accessible than the large edition. The transla
tion of the Shoo King (with abridged notes) is also given, together with
short extracts from the Shi King, in the third volume of the Sacred Books
of the East, and the Li Ki forms vols, xxvii. and xxviii. of the same
series.3 The Chow Li, of which so much use is made in the text, has been
translated in full by M. E. Biot, in two volumes, illustrated by copious
extracts from the works of native commentators. The text consisted
originally of six divisions, each of which contains a list of the officials of
different degrees employed in the various branches of the six great De
partments of State, followed by chapters descriptive of their functions.
The authorship of this remarkable monument of ancient civilization is
1 On this subject see App. I.
Literally " Springs-Autumns " = successive seasons of the year, i.e. Annals.
For the reasons against attributing any great antiquity to this work in its present
form, see L'Agedu LiKi, M. C. de Ilarlez. Trans. Ninth Oriental Congress, ii. p. 581.

476 APPENDICES.
attributed to the Duke of Chow. The text in its present form dates from
the Han Dynasty (206 B.a-221 a.d.), which has also bequeathed some
very full, interesting, and instructive comments on the newly restored
text, the authenticity of which can scarcely be questioned, when we learn
that a reward of 1000 pieces of gold was offered, after the revival of
classic learning, for a missing section of the work, without producing a
colorable forgery.
The arrangement of the classical books, undertaken by order of the
second emperor of the Tang Dynasty (627-649 a.d.), added to these the
Urh Ya, a dictionary of ancient characters, and the Heaou King, or Classic
of filial piety. By order of the Han emperors, in the first century of our
era, a report of all the literary monuments then existing was drawn up.
According to a history of literature written tvvo centuries later, there were
then " 294 collections of the Yih King from thirteen different individuals,
or editors ; 412 collections of the Shoo King from nine different individu
als ; of the book of Rites, 555 collections from thirteen different individuals ;
of the books on Music, 165 collections from six different editors ; 948 col
lections of history, under the heading of the Ch'un-Tsew, from twenty-three
different individuals ; 229 collections of the Lun-Yu (or digested conversa
tions), including the Analects and kindred fragments, from twelve different
individuals ; of the Heaou King, embracing also the Urh Ya, and some
other portions of the ancient literature, 52 collections from eleven different
individuals ; and finally, of the Lesser Learning, being works on the forms
of the characters, 45 collections from twelve different individuals. The
works of Mencius were included among the writings of what were deemed
orthodox scholars, of which there were 836 collections from fifty-three
different individuals." 1
It is impossible to suppose that this sort of library could represent the
forgeries of 200 years ; and if not, then it represents the surviving salvage
from the Burning of the Books ; and, since the Han, no dynasty has failed
to extend its care to the literary monuments of the country, so that, as Dr.
Legge observes, " The evidence is complete that the classical books of
China have come down from at' least a century before our Christian era,
substantially the same as we have them at present."
The authority of the Historic Annals, known as the Bamboo Books, has
been called in question, partly because of their substance, and partly on
account of the romantic story of their discovery. But the tendency of
Chinese scholars now is to give them at least equal authority with the Tso
Chuen and the later books of the Shoo. They are said to have been dis
covered, 279 a.d., by lawless persons, who opened (presumably in search of
treasure) the grave of King Seang of Wei, who died 295 B.C., that is, nearly
600 years before. We know that treasures were anciently buried with the
dead ; and amongst such treasures, why not the collection of a royal biblio
phile ? In ancient Egypt it was considered the proper thing to say of every
ancient text that it had been discovered in the tomb of some famous au-
1 Chinese Classics, vol. i., Prolegomena, pp. 4, 5.

APPENDICES. 47 7
cient, and the invention would have had no point unless it had actually
been the habit from the first to bury works of all kinds with the dead, as
copies of the Funeral Ritual were subsequently. The discovery of the
Bamboo Books is alluded to by a contemporary scholar, author of a well-
known edition of the Tso Chuen, and without exaggerating the importance
of their contents, they may be taken to represent the kind of chronicle kept
in every State of importance, which supplied formal historians with their
materials.1 "The lacquered tablets of the Classics which had been discovered in 154
B.C., hidden in the ancient house of Confucius, were preserved in the Royal
Archives, where those which had escaped the bibliothecal catastrophes
of the years 23 and 290 remained until 311 a.d., when they were lost in
the great fire which destroyed the precious library once collected by the
Wei Dynasty. The year 175 a.d. saw put in practice the grandest idea of
the time. In view of securing evermore the integrity of the sacred books,
Tsai-Yung, duly authorized by the emperor, Han-Ling-Ti, after a careful re
vision of the text of six kings by competent scholars, wrote them himself in
red on forty-six stela. The engraving and erection of the tablets was finished
in 183 a.d. in front of the Imperial College, on the east side of Loh-Yang."
The text was given in three characters. " Students were allowed to take rub
bings of the stones, and the result was that less than a century afterwards five
of the stela had disappeared ; only twelve were still intact, and twenty-nine
were either broken or defaced."2 Between 240 and 265 the Wei emperors
had another edition of the Classics, with the exception of the Book of
Odes, engraved on stone tablets ; but these remarkable monuments did not
remain intact ; time and removals caused them to disappear gradually,
andin7i7A.D. the forty-eight tablets of 248 were reduced to thirteen.
" All that remains of them since that time is preserved at Si-ngan-fu in the
famous Pei-lin, or Forest of Tablets, amongst the 300 inscriptions that it
contains." "Ancient texts were printed as early as 593 b.c, but it was only in 932
that an imperial order was issued to engrave on wood, and print for distri
bution the nine king recognised at the time. The work was finished in
932." 3 The arrangement of the classical books, undertaken by order of
the second emperor of the Tang Dynasty (627-649 a.d.) included the
Urh Ya, a dictionary of ancient characters, and the Heaou King, or classic
of Filial Piety (included in the Sacred Books of the East). From time to
time other editions in different characters were brought out by private
scholars or imperial command. But there has been no room for uncer
tainty concerning the texts themselves since the new set of stone classics
For instance, it is stated on the authority of some lost annals thai " from Hwang-ti
to Yu was thirty generations," which, at live generations to a century, would give a very
moderate and possible period of 500 years for the pre-hLtoric colonization of the Nine
Provinces. 2 The Oldest Book of the Chinese, The Yh-King and its Authors, by A. Terrien de
Lacouperie(i892), p. 103.
8 lb., p. 104.

478 APPENDfCES.
was erected at Chang-ngan (Si-ngan-fu) in the 9th century. Five years
(833-837) were spent in engraving the twelve works included in this edi
tion on 216 tablets ; and they are still preserved, practically uninjured, in
the " Forest of Tablets '' already referred to. Some original rubbings
which had been taken from the three-character stone classics of the Wei
Dynasty were discovered about the middle of the 1 ith century by a scholar
named Su-wang, who had them engraved and published, and this work was
reprinted in the present century by a scholar into whose hands a copy had
come. The earlier dynasties were in the habit of removing the stone tablets
erected by them in their capitals when, for any reason, the seat of empire
was transferred ; but with increasing respect for the sanctity of ancient
monuments, and experience of the dangers to which they were exposed by
such removals, the custom was abandoned. But as it was clearly improper
that Peking should be worse off than Si-ngan-fu, 182 tablets, engraved on both
sides in a style of great beauty, containing the thirteen classics, were erected
in the Kien-lung reign at Peking, and are still the admiration of students.
The later literature of China is too voluminous to allow even a summary
to be given here. It will be enough to mention just the names of those
writers whose works are of almost classical authority and vogue. The
" Narratives of the States," the mine from which modern dramatists and his
torical novelists draw half their plots, is attributed to Tso, the author of
the Commentary on Confucius' Spring and Autumn. The "Warring States,"
which has had the same destiny, dates in its oldest form from the Han
Dynasty, but has been amplified by later editors. A translation of the
original version of the work would be exceedingly valuable. The same re
mark applies to the " Historical Records " of Szema-tsien,1 who first worked
out the system of chronology since generally accepted from Hwang-ti,
2697 B.C., to his own day, 104 B.C. This work is the first in the collection of
" Twenty-three Histories," ending with the Ming Dynasty, which was issued
by Imperial order, in 1 742, by a commission of forty-five officers and scholars
of the present dynasty. Dr. Legge's copy of the Collection, " bound in
English fashion, makes fifty-three volumes."
The " Collected Comments on the Shi," by Choo Hi, were published in
1 1 7 7, and in the imperial edition of the Odes published in 1 7 2 7, the authority
of this commentary is substantially maintained. Chinese scholarship, it may
be observed, is not at all credulous ; and modern criticism, when it begins
to apply itself to the literature of the Flowery Land, will find a great deal
of work done ready to its hand. The Shi King contains 305 odes, and
the titles of six more, supposed to have been included in the collection
made by Confucius, are preserved. According to tradition, the original
collection consisted of 3,000 pieces ; and the remarks on this subject, made
by a scholar of the present dynasty, may be quoted as a fair specimen of
the rational principles of criticism adopted. There are two historical works
little later than Confucius, in which the Odes are frequently quoted. One
1 Whom Dr. de Lacouperie calls the Herodotus of China.

APPENDICES. 479
of them, the Tso Chuen, already described, contains 219 quotations from
the Odes, of which only thirteen are not identifiable in the surviving clas
sic ; the other contains thirty-one quotations, all but one of vvhich are in
the Shi King as known to us. If, observed Chaou-Yih in the last century,
"the poems existing in Confucius' time had been more than '3,000, the
quotations found in these two books of poems now lost should have been
ten times as numerous as the quotations from the 305 pieces .said to have
been preserved by him ; whereas they are only between a twenty-first and a
twenty-second part of the existing pieces " — -whence he concludes that the
number of lost pieces must be inconsiderable.
The " San-kwo-chi, or History of the Three Kingdoms," is also a favourite
mine for the dramatist, and is intended as a history rather than a romance,
though it gives prominence to all the romantic incidents.1 A portion of it
has been translated by M. T. Pavie. Another work, to which it is much
to be desired that translators should turn their attention, is the great Ency
clopaedia of Ma-twan-lin, called a " General Examination of Records and
Scholars," the result of twenty years' labour, published in 1321. Remusat
calls " this excellent work " a library in itself, and held that if Chinese
literature consisted of it alone, the language would be worth learning for
the sake of reading it.
Of course, all these materials require to be used critically, in order to
give their full quantum of reliable information. The Tso Chuen is rather
like a Chinese Livy, and it is not to be supposed that Chinese historians
are more infallible as to affairs before their own day than a Thucydides
or Polybius ; but they had access to a larger number of contemporary
records, and the main outlines of the history derived from such fragments
of their works as have been translated are probably to be depended on. A
serious history of China cannot be written except by a Chinese scholar ;
and such scholars will no doubt, for many years to come, find one dynasty
at a time quite enough for a work of the desirable Grundlichkeit.
The Histoire Generate de la Chine, by P. de Mailla, is derived from the
Tongkien-kang-mou which Kang-hi, who did so much for the study of the
Classics, caused to be translated into Tatar for the benefit of the vanquished
conquerors of the Middle Kingdom. But though a convenient and trust
worthy compendium (in thirteen quarto volumes), it is far less interesting
and instructive as to the national life of China than other authorities of
which less is known.
A Chinese bibliography by the brothers von Mollendorff, and another by
M. Henri Cordier in two volumes (1878-81), will give the reader any fur
ther information that may be desired as to the stock European authorities
on China; the " Chinese Reader's Manual," by W. F. Mayers, and Mr.
Wylie's " Notes on Chinese Literature " should also be consulted.
1 Robin Hood's feats of archery are forestalled by an interesting, if not very admirable,
warrior, Lin- Pou, who makes two rivals (one of whom is his friend) agree to disband their
troops if he succeeds in piercing with his arrow a lance-stem at a distance of 150 paces,
which he then proceeds to do. (San-kwo-chi, ii. p. 8.)

APPENDIX I.
Vol. i., p. 31 ; vol. ii., p. 16.
China and Babylonia and the Yi King.
As long ago as 187 1 Dr. Edkins was struck by the many ancient customs
pointing to a connection once existing between Western Asia and China, and
proposed that " China's Place in Philology " should be considered by the
light of these resemblances. In 1880 a paper on the History of the
Chinese language by M. Terrien de Lacouperie was laid before the Royal
Asiatic Society, in which the " phonetic laws of spelling of the ancient
Chinese writing " and the resemblances between this writing and the pre-
cuneiform or linear Akkadian character were described ; and the theory
advanced that the unintelligible Chinese classic, the Yi King, might be a
kind of archaic dictionary, intended to preserve the memory of the con
nection between characters like the modern " radicals " and their deriva
tives. Prof. R. K. Douglas took part in these investigations and concurred
in their results, which to the present writer appeared then as almost " too
good to be true," so acceptable was the philological proof of relationship,
as an explanation of resemblances at once too radical and too minute to
be accidental.
Thus far the subject had been approached by Sinologists, taking up
Akkadian to illustrate Chinese ; but before long the fruitfulness of the
opposite course was made plain by the inquiries of the Rev. C. J. Ball, an
Assyriologist who began to study Chinese for the purposes of philological
comparison and the illustration of the too scanty Akkadian texts. In 1889
he began to publish a systematic comparison of Chinese and Akkadian
roots,1 and, as M. Terrien de Lacouperie expresses it, by grouping his
assimilations to avoid the many pitfalls inherent to comparison of mono
syllables, " has undoubtedly proved a deep relationship between the
vocabulary of the two languages," 3 though only about two-thirds of his
identifications with old Chinese are accepted by the pioneer of the investi
gation. To outsiders it is reassuring that there should be even this amount
of agreement between independent inquirers, and the identifications may
be all the more readily accepted because the evidence is sufficiently obvious
to convince specialists from two different fields.
Mr. Ball has devoted himself exclusively to the philological side, and some
1 P S.B.A., vol. xii. p. 4, xiii. pp. 83, 368, 484.
2 The oldest book of the Chinese, the Yh-King and its authors. By A. Terrien de
Lacouperie. Vol. i. History and Method, 1892, p. 108.

APPENDICES.

481

of the identifications which are least obvious to the general reader are most
convincing to students of language, because of the uniformities in the permu
tation of sounds which they establish between the tvvo languages. On the
other hand, some of the very numerous sounds, apparently exactly alike
and having the same meaning in both tongues, may be merely accidents
due to the limited variety of monosyllabic sounds available. A certain
percentage of deductions may be allowed for on this ground, and still
leave the resemblances numerous enough to satisfy sceptics.
These resemblances may be classed in three groups : identity of sound
or parallelism of phonetic modification between words having the same or
allied senses in Akkadian and Chinese ; resemblances between the cha
racter used to express a given idea in linear Babylonian and archaic Chinese
writings, vvhich in some cases outlast the resemblance of sound in the word
for which the character stands ; because when the pictorial significance of
the character is lost sight of, false analogies sometimes cause it to be used
as a symbol in a new and inconsistent sense ; and, lastly, resemblances in
the habits of thought, which lead to the establishment of similar associa
tions between words and symbols that are not self-evidently allied.
The following groups of terms for parts of the body, objects connected
with agriculture, and various animals are taken, by his kind permission,
from Mr. Ball's paper On the Accadian Affinities of Chinese, read at the
Ninth London Congress of Orientalists, 1892.

Accadian.
bad, body, skin
sun, su „ „
sag,sangalhead zag,zang J
umun, face
su, beard (from sud, sug)
igi(n) ] eye
en (from gan) j
ka, mouth
mush-tub -)
gish, ge V ear
bum ( = vur))
shi(b), shu(b), ear
gun, gu, neck, throat
bar, flesh, belly
tu, belly
tig, zag, side
gab, breast (and ribs).
bar, back
shu, hands
da(d), hand
vol. 11. — p.c.

Chinese.
*bat, p'i
shen, sin
sheu, su
sang (forehead)
mfn, mien
sii, *sut
yen, ngan, nge"
k'eu, ku
*top (P. 314) (P. 238)1
*ngit, *ngi, i ; Amoy hi (from ki, gi)
er
*shep (R. 128)
king, hiang, *gun (P. 827) *gu, heu
*pak, fok, fu ; Jap. hara (from para)
tuchek, tsek, tseh (*tek, *dzak)
*gib, hip, sides, ribs.
*bak, pok, poh
sheu, shu
*dok, *dak (l>. 15), *dot, *dat 1 1

482

APPENDICES.

Accadian.
zdiUbS'dub} leg, knee
gir, foot ; firm
nu(g), uzu(g), flesh
(g)ush ( = gut, gud)-

gltu, sa(t) > blood
mud )
lu-gud (lug + gud), clear blood
a-dama, dark blood

Chinese.
t'ui, *t'ok, thigh, leg (*t'ut)
tsuk, tsuh, leg, foot
ke"uk, kiek, kioh, foot ; firm
*nuk, nibk, zhiok, zheu
*git, hit ; also
sut, sii (P. 281)
mit, mieh
*lung, *git
*dam, tan, red

Agriculture.
Here are some words relating to the important art of tillage.
Chinese.

Accadian.
e-din, field
lu, dab, dib, land
i-dim, well, spring
33 33
dun, dim, dig, plough
(dim) ra'g, a plough
kur, ku, canal
gan, garden
mu, gish, gid, tree, stalk, trunk
sar 7
. \ greens
sig)
sham ( = shang, shag), herbs
sum, sun, garlic
uSkush]g°Urds
kul) zir
esh-shu, ear of corn
anu (enu) ear of corn
she (sheg, shed \
shug, shud) > grain, corn, etc.
zi, zid J
ma, mu, ba ) ,
, ' ' \ wheat
(an-she)-nag )

f grain, seeds, cereals

*din, tien
*lut, Iii ; *dab, ti (earth)
*din, *dzin, ch'iien, ts'iien ;
*dim, tsing
*din, tien, to till
*lag, *lik, lei, li, a plough
*kuk, keu
*gon, yuen
muk, mu ; ngit, yeh
*tsak, ts'ai (zag, sag)
*tsak, ts'au
sung sun, swan
*kuk, *kut, kwa
kuk, kuh ; *gak, hwo
*tsok, tsz'
*suk, sui ; suk, suh
ying, e"ng, head or awn of grain
suk, suh, grain ; *zhut, shu, millet
tsi, panicled millet
shut, tsut, zeh, millet
*mak, Jap. mugi, baku
*lak, lai

Accadian.
lu, sheep and oxen
gu, gud (ngud)-) bull, o.

na, sha

i

Names of Animals.
lu, lau
ngau, gu
niu

Chinese,

APPENDICES.

483

Accadian.

Chinese.

gug (gung) \

ye'ung, yang

u-mun J

kuk, kut

rig (fng) sh lamb

min, mien

guk-kal (

se'ung, siang

u-du 1

*kak, kau

i-dib /

*du, t'u, chu

sha'g, sig, dab ") .
dam, dim ) °

shi, *shok, *shik, *dap, ship
t'un, d^ng, *dom, tw'an, chung, toung

e-lum {
e-lim JStag

ling

dara, antelope, deer

luk, luh

am-sig, elephant

siang

u-shum=u-shub \
sir ma'g

*shap, she"

(written mug- -serpent
mug) j
mush /

mang
man, min
*mung

gir, scorpion

*git, hit

nim, turn, insects

*dom, t'iong, ch'ung

bar, leopard ; spotted felinae

*pok, pau

num(ma), wolf

*lung, lang

Accadian dumu-zi, pig, Tammuz (the Swine-god), is a compound (dum
=dam; zi=zig, sig, sir). It survives in the Turkish domuz, pig. The
dialectic 'gumu-nsir reappears in the Semitic loan-words chumsiru, chinzir,
chazir. 'Gumu=gian, kin, boar ('gumunsir).
The asterisks denote old Chinese forms, and the other references are to
the " Phonetics in Edkins' Introduction to the Study of the Chinese
Characters." A few other isolated specimens of similarities of sound and sense be
tween the two languages may be added. The ninth Chinese radical j'an,
man, the character for which represents two legs, corresponds to a modern
dialectical form, modified in the same direction as Akkadian variants as
seen in the table : —

Akkadian

Gin:

Din

Ni(n)

Chinese

Yin

jin

niang

Old Chinese

gin

din

nin

The interchangeableness of y and g in the two languages is illustrated
by many examples, as Akk. gis, gi, one ; Chi. yit, yi, one ; Akk. gin, gim,
handmaid ; Chi. gim, yin, girl. The interchangeableness of n and d is
common to both languages, so that the old Chinese gin and din have
counterparts in the Akkadian forms ni and ti, to fear ; ni and di, bright ;
na(g) and dag, stone ; idin and inim, heaven. Then we have —

484

APPENDICES.

Accadian.
tu, tuk, clothes I
i, sig, shang J
uk, to take, to seize
Shu, a multitude
Shu, to throw down
She, grain
Shag, bright, pure, holy

Chinese.
Tok, chok, i, shik, se"k, shang, clothes
Tok, to take ; tek, to get
Shu, a multitude
Shu, to overturn, to exterminate
Shu, millet
Sho (shak), bright, to shine

Shuk (kal), high messenger or servant Shi (shik), follower
Shi, to command, send, service
Kal, high, noble Kao, high, noble

The phonetic resemblance in the last case is supplemented by the close
agreement between the linear character in Gudea's inscriptions and the old
Chinese writing. The initial g, which Akkadian scholars assume to be
earlier than k, in Chinese is often worn down to h, so that kwei, hwei, and
hvvei, old gut, to return, turn round, represents an Akk. gur, with similar
meanings. The change simply from g to k is illustrated in the following
list ; that from g to y already mentioned is still more frequent.

(0 '

G passing into k.

Accadian.

Chini

ga, house

kia, *ka
gab, to open
k'ai
° , j- demon
kwei, *gut
gur, to raise
ku
gar (gur), chariot
kti, A. ku
'ge, this
k'i
gin, reed, rod
kan
gin, fasten, establish
kin, kien
gish, one
k'i *kit, single
gun, neck, throat
king
gun, tribute
kung
gur, to return
kwei, *gut
(2)
G passing
into y.
Accadian.
Chini
ga, gar, gur \ .
(g).l, gal, (g)al/ra,se
', lift,
carry
yii, *guk
'ga, kua = gwa, ku,
fish
yii, *ngu
'gad, stylus
yuh, *got
gal, to have, to be
yu, *guk
gan, cloud
yun, *gun
gan, garden
yuen, *gon
APPENDICES. 485
Accadian. Chinese.
gar (gar-sag), summit yoh, C ngok, A. gak
gash, two, second va, *gak ( = gat)
gig, dark, night yih, C yik, dark
ge, night ye, night
gig, sick, sickness yih, C. yik
gin, geme, handmaid yin, *gim
gin, to walk yin
gir (i-gir), wings yih, C. yik
gish, gi, one yih, C. yit
gish, tree, stalk veh, C. ngft, A. giet
gish, male, strong, hero yih, C. ngat, strong, martial
gud, gu, ox viu, C. ngau, A. gin, gu
gu, gudu, gude, speak yii ; *yut, C. ut, M. yueh
gug, a gem yuh, C. yuk, *nguk
gul, 'gil(i), joy, rejoice yii, *yuk'; yoh, *ngok
'gun, to look up yang, *ngong.
Parallel examples are found within each language of the same phonetic
change of g, by way of y, into a mere breathing.
Amongst the ideograms common to Akkadian and Chinese, it is of
course prudent only to rely on those in which the association of the sign
and meaning are, to a certain extent, conventional. A stroke for the
numeral one, and a circle for the sun, would suggest themselves indepen
dently to any inventors of writing. The Akkadian character read ka-is-
bar, and translated " to give oracular decisions," consists of three elements
— mouth, one, to divine ; and the Chinese composite character read ki, to
divine, also contains the elements pu-k'au-yih, to divine, mouth, one. The
25th Chinese radical puk, pu, the first element in this group, was anciently
written I-, while in Gudea's style, with the position rectified, the character
for the corresponding Akkadian element, bar, to divine, is ]
In Akkadian, the ideogram for god was a star ; the corresponding word
dingir, used for god or king, was written phonetically with three elements,
"judge-plant-prick," and the composite Chinese character ti (representing
an earlier form, tik, dig), to judge, a god, the king, preserves traces in its
structure of the same elements "judge," and "prickly plant" The ideo
gram of a star for god, also reappears in both the Akkadian and Chinese
characters for ear of corn or growing grain, the persistence of the ideogram
being unmistakable, while the identification of the words pre-supposes a
series of modifications, which by themselves appear possible rather than
inevitable. The use of the divine star as a symbol for grain helps to
explain the. common Chinese phrase, referring to the altars or the worship
of "the land and the grain," in translating which Dr. Legge always inter
polates the gloss " the spirits of." The Chinese character bears in itself
the suggestion of divinity.

486 APPENDICES.
Mr. Ball, who has kindly revised the above lists, communicates to me
the following additional, as yet unpublished, confirmation. The ku wen ot
the old word *suk siie, ear of corn is actually n£- = Akkadian -^£- essu,
ear of corn ; the Lu shu tung gives as the ku wen of siie or sui, ear of
corn, y&j , and another old form is jjz^ , all clearly rough cursive forms

of the eight rayed star, which in both languages is also god. The word
y
essu=ansu (g) and \t se, corn, is also read sug, while an(u) is another
term for ear of corn. The following parallel is also interesting. In
Babylonia the planet Venus was female from sunset (to sunrise) ; male
from sunrise (to sunset).1 In China the planet Venus is female as the
morning star, Nii-ts'ien, and wife of the same planet, called T'ai-poh shang-
kung (=Dilbad shukum, Akkadian titles of Venus) as evening star. The
ku wen for star is 0°0 ; and the oldest Babylonian for star is *%*, and the
correspondence of the three Chinese circles with the three Babylonian
stars can hardly be accidental.
The old Chinese character for fire, an angle with three strokes above it,
corresponds with the archaic Babylonian character for fire, representing
an altar with flames ; and though this, it may be said, is only a coincidence
of obvious picture writing, this is not the case with the Akkadian ideogram,
containing the elements ku-gin, gold, which in its original form bears an
cbvious likeness to the Chinese character kin, also gold. The significance
of the Akkadian characters (bright, yellow) serves to correct the current
Chinese analysis.
The inscribed cylinders commonly buried in the foundations of Baby
lonian buildings were called dimmen, the character for which in the very

early monuments of E-anna-du is XqpX, while the Chinese man, wan,
anciently men, " writing," was written originally \°> , and has not been
very materially altered since. Nebo, the Babylonian god of letters, the
Dimsar, or scribe par excellence, of the Akkadians was commonly indicated
hy a compound ideogram, god-stylus, the latter of which elements is read
gad, gud, muwat, and corresponds to the Chinese wat, yuh, old yut, stylus,
and the Chinese character resembles the Akkadian, only with a hand
grasping the stylus. The resemblance between kal, kao, noble, eminent, has
been referred to already, and the resemblance between Gudea's version and
the old Chinese character is among the closest met with, TT and |~T
1 3 K- S3- 3°-

APPENDICES. 487
The fact that a drawing of four squares stands for fields in Chinese and
Akkadian would prove nothing, because, like the Egyptian hieroglyph, it
is the obvious way of indicating that cultivated land is divided by irrigation
channels ; but the fact that

was read lu, dib, dab, in Akkadian, and
lu, hit, *tap, in Chinese is not likely to be accidental. The Akkadian sug,
zug, field, written with the ideogram for enclosure and water, is compared
by Mr. Ball with Chinese tsi, tsii, an unfilled field, curiously written with
the signs for water and field, as it were lucus a non lucendo, since irrigated
and cultivated fields are synonymous ; the interpretation may be that the
Chinese tsi shows water outside the fields, while the same elements of
enclosure and water (ante, p. 42) are used to indicate the well which is the
centre of cultivation in both countries.
There is a similar resemblance in the coincidence of Akkadian mun and
Chinese min for the curved line or angle representing a roof and meaning
house. The symbol house-god is an element in the Akkadian character
for parents, and the old Chinese chin, parents, includes exactly the
same elements, and closely resembles the linear form of the Akka-
Chi. f-^l- One more pictorial coincidence must suffice.

dian

%

The father and mother are the gods of the house, and the city is the
dwelling-place, the seat of the god. The ku-wen forms of the Chinese
character fang, old ban, gan, " place," are almost indistinguishable from the

linear Akkadian

for place, city, which seems from its derivatives

"to have had the various sounds gan, gal, gun, gin, gar, gur, and perhaps
ban." The ideogram seems to represent the throne upon which the city
god may be supposed to sit, as the king does in his portrait statues.
If we now compare a few of the favourite objects or dominant ideas of
the two nations, the same suggestions of a common source appear. The
phonetic connection between uknu (Akk. lapis lazuli) and Chinese yu,
beautiful, precious, clear white, jade, or gem, belongs perhaps to the
doubtful list ; but the following are something more than plausible : —
Akkadian : Lai (according to the syllabaries) saqalu, to weigh, measure
money, to pay. Chinese : Liao, to measure.
Akkadian : Di, dinu or denu, judgment Chinese : Ti, to judge be
tween. The same sign is read kud, with the sense of dividing, which answers to
an old Chinese ko or kat, to examine, sift thoroughly, a law. It is also
read tar, tim, with senses answering to those of Chinese tien ; and sila, in
which case it is translated street, to subdue, rule, judge. Akkadian towns,
as we have seen, were divided into quarters by their main streets, and the
practice of doing justice in the gates (of the city streets) would keep up
the association between the material and the figurative uses of the word.

488 APPENDICES.
The Akkadian ideogram with three sounds and nine Assyrian definitions
had probably the original sound and sense which survives in China with
the root ti, and the notion of dividing or discriminating.
Akkadian duk, a cup, vessel, answers to Chinese teu (old sound duk),
wooden trencher, sacrificial dish. Akkadian an, anna, heaven, high, may
be compared with Chinese ang, high. Akkadian gis, gi, one, answers pho
netically to Chinese yih, yit; but a much stronger proof of common origin
than the mere possession of a similarly sounding numeral is supplied by the
common metaphorical use of the term. Gi is said to be defined in one place
as sarru, king ; and yit nin, the One Man, as the reader will remember, is
a standing epithet for the primitive Chinese king in the Shoo. The three
signs for 30 were read in Akkadian esin and shebu, and the late sheb
suggests a primitive shab, with which the Chinese sap, sa, seh, for 3 tens
may be compared. The Chinese san, 3, seems to answer to the form
esm. Sin, the Moon-god, in compounds san (e.g. Sanherib), was sym
bolized by the number 30. The Akkadian shanabi, 40 (? a compound ol
shana, 20, and bi, 2), is interesting because, as already mentioned, it is the
word used for the fraction -§-, because 40 is f of 60 ; and it is possible that
the Chinese sap, 40, is a much decayed reminiscence of this original.
The Chinese words for brick, tile, can also be derived by a series of
normal changes (from ga to wa, through an intermediate ngwa) from an
Akkadian original gar, mur, mar.
For the numerous other parallels, possible, probable, and virtually cer
tain, of which the above are but a few specimens, the reader must consult
Mr. Ball's papers.
In the preceding pages allusion has been made to the Akkadian sylla
baries giving the various meanings borne by isolated characters. M. de
Lacouperie's suggestion is that the Yi King consisted originally of just such
lists of meanings, and as a test case he has taken the archaic Babylonian
character, lu, a bull, for comparison with the similar Chinese character li,
a cow. The thirtieth chapter of the Yi King deals with this character, the
ancient sounds of which were lip, dep, de. The early forms of the cor
responding cuneiform was lup, dip, udu. There are twenty-two separate
meanings given for the Chinese character, all save one of which have some
approach to a counterpart in the twenty-seven entries given in a classified
list of cuneiform ideographs compiled by a German scholar. The two lists
are as follows : —
Babylonian. Chinese.
bulu, cattle ; senu, sheep, "cow A domestic cow
alaku, to walk To shoe
ba'u, to seek ? Confused
mitu, to die Burn away, brightness fading, burn
ing-like dying
tamahu, to hold; lamu, to surround; ? Attentive, lucky omen
\ ullulu, to protect

APPENDICES. 489
Babylonian. Chinese.
nigu, music Special music
kissu, multitude ? Perpetual chatter
hatu, trespass; eteku, to go forward Oppose, rushing against
ba'aru, to hunt ? To meet
sabatu, sibitu, kamu, to seize ? Throwing off, to split wood, to
cut off
tabaku, outpouring Falling drops
abazu, to possess, to take To have something
kirdibbu, ? kirru, immeru, beast Ravenous beast
kababu, a cover Bamboo basket
subburu, to oppress Abominable bogie1
With regard to the use of the same character for sheep and cow, Mr. Ball
(p. 692) seems to make it probable that lu is used in a general sense for
domestic animals who are kept in enclosures, both sound and character
for ox-stall being alike in Chinese and Akkadian. The meaning en
circling, which M. de Lacouperie had obtained from another source,
would probably be connected in this way with the original character; and
that of law and order, also given, might answer to the Chinese sense of
cutting and splitting, in the metaphorical sense met with before. When
all the possible causes of divergence, during a separation of thousands of
years between the earliest editing of the Chinese Classic and the Akkadian
syllabaries, are taken into account, the survival of so many parallel mean
ings, in groups put together on apparently arbitrary lines, is certainly re
markable. The earliest arrangement of the text of the Yi King, according to the
Chinese, was effected by King Wen, the father of Wu, who founded the
dynasty of Chow. This prince was imprisoned for two years (1 144-3
b.c) for a State offence, and occupied his enforced leisure in composing
the earliest commentary on the Yi, the text of which therefore must have
existed before his time. The ancient Ku-wen character was probably
then a phonetic expression of real speech, but dialectical divergences had
made the correspondence a thing of the past, when, in the 9th century
e.g., a famous minister of King Sieuen invented the Ta Chuen style of
characters, which were an attempt, often misguided, to revert to an ideo
graphic system.2
There is probably some connection, though no one can at present say
what, between the Kwas, the whole and divided lines vvhich head the sec
tions of the Yi King, and the method of divination by stalks, rods or
arrows, which was the alternative to divination by the tortoise shell. And
it is possible that Akkadian texts may yet throw light on the allusions to
1 The Yh King and its Authors, p. 119.
2 M. de Lacouperie believes that the secret of the "righteous decisions" of the
Spring and Autumn was a matter of caligraphy, and that the characters used had a
favourable or unfavourable connotation, the force of which was forgotten in the agus
after Confucius.

490 APPENDICES.
both these systems in the Tso Chuen.1 It seems clear however, that the
use of the Yi for divination began late, when its real meaning was on the
way to be forgotten, as the so-called foretelling words in the present text
have no place in the rhymes of the rhyming chapters.
M. de Lacouperie has attempted translations of six chapters, one of
which has been analysed already. The seventh and the fifteenth chapters
are also rendered as vocabularies ; and among the characters in the latter
there are two, the renderings of which appear to justify the view that Con
fucius, in his views on cornering (ante, p. 41), was really "a transmitter and
not a maker" of doctrines older than King Wen. A character which is
translated " underselling " is paraphrased in. the Chinese "not rich by means
of his neighbours;" and another, "to overcharge price," is paraphrased,
" many employ it in cheating and plundering " ! So even in the hands of
its most matter-of-fact translator, the Yi King seems to keep up its cha
racter as a mine of hidden oracles of wisdom. The thirty-first chapter is a
vocabulary ; the twentieth a sort of historical ballad or epigram, relating to
a Prince Kwan (22nd century B.C.), whose name is identical with that of the
character heading a short vocabulary. The thirteenth chapter describes
the manners and customs of certain cave-men, according to our author the
aborigines dwelling in the loess cliffs, and their gradual acceptance of the
blessings of Chinese civilization, in vvhich again we recognise the perennial
tone of Chinese politicians.
Mr. Ball and M. Lacouperie agree in regarding Chinese as a repre
sentative of a much earlier stage of Turano-Scythic speech than any other
living language, and as still including elements going back to some source,
common to it with the founders of Elamo-Babylonian civilization. And in
view of the affinities suggested, on other grounds, in the preceding pages,
the conclusions of M. Lacouperie's linguistic researches is not without
interest. He observes : " At present the Turano-Scythic stock of languages
is divided into six principal groups : —
1. S.W. Asiatic; Akkado-Sumerian, etc.
2. Uralic; Ugro-Finnish ; Samoyed ; Tungusic; Japanese.
3. Altaic; Turkish; Mongol.
4. Kuenlunic ; Kotte ; Chinese ; Tibeto-Burmese.
5. Himalaic ; Dravidian ; Gangetic ; Kolarian, etc.
6. Caucasic ; N. Caucasian ; Alarodian.
The Euskarian is perhaps the sole representative, diverged and altered,
of a seventh group." 2 It should be observed, in passing, apropos oi the
branches here enumerated, which have not been alluded to in the preced
ing volumes, that the Finns at least should have received consideration
above, had space permitted more than an allusion to their self-governing
aptitudes, and their regard for the mother as virtual ruler of the house
hold. M. Lacouperie is prepared to account for a considerable number of the
parallels to Chinese in the various other branches, by direct intercourse
1 C.C., v. p. 195. 2 L.c, p. 107.

APPENDICES. 4y i
in historic times ; and he includes Saboeans, Syrians, and Hindus among
the foreign traders who issued the first coins of China at Tsih-moh city
about 670 B.C. (ante, p. 58). But this part of the subject requires elucida
tion from several outside sources before we can rely absolutely upon the
identifications suggested. As the author has in the press a new work on
the " Western Origin of Chinese Civilization," it would be untimely to
summarize the results already published by him in various periodicals on
this subject.
- There is one other ancient Chinese document which it is somewhat
grievous to have to leave unutilized in a work of this kind, — a grant of
land in favour of the San family, attributed to the latter years of the Yin
dynasty, preserved in the original characters, which Chinese writers fail to
interpret satisfactorily, and Chinese Sinologues have not yet grappled with.
Two pages of the inscription are shown in one of the cases at the British
Museum, and in these a character (J) occurs twice, which Prof. Douglas
informs me is read by the Chinese as equivalent to the four squares which
stand for tien, field. The character in itself is so much more like the
Egyptian hieroglyph for city, and the Hittite character compared with it,
that the question arises whether it can be read, or fitted with an Akkadian
parallel, in this sense.
When the learning and ingenuity spent on much shorter, less interest
ing, and less ancient inscriptions in other tongues is considered, the
neglect of Chinese antiquities seems really astonishing ; and it is to be
hoped that the contemporary publications of Prof. Douglas and M.
Terrien de Lacouperie may rouse sufficient interest in that subject to
enlist fresh workers in the field.

APPENDIX K.
Vol. ii., p. 69, 120.
The Chinese Families and Irish " Fines."
There can be little doubt that the conventional classification of the
agricultural communities in China was affected by the spontaneous group
ing of the families which did, in fact, live and cultivate the ground together.
The subjoined genealogical tree shows the traditional nine branches of
kindred in all their ramifications, worked out symmetrically with an allow
ance of tvvo sons to every father. If we suppose the ninth generation to
be not yet marriageable, there may be a few surviving great-grandfathers,
(B) whose personal authority would of course be great, but would not
interfere with the separate establishment of successive grandfathers. At
this time there would be surviving from each of the four ancestors of the
third generation (Y) just eight natural family groups or households, four
of vvhich are founded by the householders' grandfathers (B), while two
trace to a great-grandfather (A), one to a great-great-grandfather (Z), and
one to the common ancestor of a generation further back (Y). The
scheme of nine generations x will give us four such groups of eight
The hamlet may have consisted of a fourth of such a group ; i.e. of four
or more neighbouring families of which two were founded by living grand
fathers (C), one by a great-grandfather (B), and the other by the common
ancestor of the group (A), together with four married younger sons not
yet attained to the dignity of grand paternity. Whether these last were
or were not established in separate households would probably depend
upon the number of individuals and generations living in each particular
case. The representative of the eldest branch, who continued to live in
the house with both father and grandfather, was not likely to keep his own
younger sons after their marriage, but a younger son separately established
might have two sons living with him until the younger of them came in
his turn to have sons of marriageable age.
The use of this imaginary genealogical tree will be more apparent when
we come to consider the conventional families or " fines '' of the Brehon
laws ; but the actual practice of the Chinese family groups helps to inter
pret the perplexing regulations of the Irish code, while the coincidence of
the genealogical grouping in one case, with the territorial or agricultural
boundaries contemplated in the other, gives a presumption that both were
1 A descendant of the ninth generation is called a "ear-grandson;" his connection
may be a matter of record, but hardly of practical significance.

APPENDICES. 493
determined roughly by the same natural considerations. It is in all cases
the younger branches that are compelled to separate and form new house
holds, while the elder branch may continue in an unbroken line from the
remotest ancestor. The commentary on one of the odes of Chow shows
that this method of forming branch families was fully recognised. Three
triplets celebrate in parallel style the " sons," the " grandsons," and the
"kindred" of the prince;1 and weare told that "the term surname is
used for grandsons, because the grandson's descendants become a new
clan, with the designation of his grandfather for a clan name." Thus B
in the genealogical tree may live to see one of his grandsons (i.e. his
eldest son's second son) found a new family named after himself; but his
own younger son would be established independently as a descendant and
namesake of his grandfather, B's father, A, without special reference to B
himself.2 The '• kindred " are all those who trace their lineage to a common
"high ancestor," the original stock of the nine branches, which in the case
of one legendary worthy were all found living under one roof-tree.
The national doctrine of filial piety, as applied in China, prevented any
such extension of the patria potestas as existed at Rome, and was believed
by Sir Henry Maine to have existed elsewhere. The son who was also
a father had as such irrefragable claims to authority and respect, which
his own father could not be the first to disregard. The eldest son, who
remained under the ancestral roof, derived more dignity from his position as
a representative of the senior branch than he lost by not becoming himself
an independent householder. The youngest son, if forisfamiliated, was
not thereby emancipated from any of the obligations of filial piety, which
continued binding on the elder son who would succeed to the headship
of the house.
This senior branch seems to correspond to the Irish Geilfine family
group, which according to the Brehon lawyers might conceivably consist
of five persons in different generations, from the father to the great-great-
grandson, or just over half of the Chinese nine degrees of relationship.
Most readers of Sir Henry Maine's attempt to interpret the meaning of
the Irish family groups,5 with their four classes and seventeen members, by
the light of paternal power, must have felt that the real problem remained
nearly as perplexing with as without the proffered explanation. The editor
of the Book of Aicill states the case as follows : "Within the family 17
members were organized in four divisions, of which the junior class, known
as the Geilfine division, consisted of five persons ; the Deirbhfine, the
second in order, the Iarfine, the third in order , and the Indfine, the
senior of all, consisted respectively of four persons. The whole organi
zation consisted and could only consist of 17 members. If any person
1 tegge, iv. p. 19.
* There is clearly an allusion to this in the Li Ki, which speaks (S. B., vol. xxviii.
p. 43) of a son other than the eldest becoming the ancestor of a branch of the same
line. 3 Early History of Institutions, p. 2 1 7.

494

APPENDICES.

was born into the Geilfine division, its eldest member was promoted into
the Deirbhfine, the oldest member of the Deirbhfine passed into the
Iarfine, and the eldest member of Indfine passed out of the organization
altogether." The Book of Aicill itself, however, does not speak of persons
being " born " into the Geilfine division, but only says, " If one person
has come up into the Geilfine division so as to make it excessive, a man
must go out of it into the Deirbhfine division," and so on— which is not
exactly the same thing.
The four groups, it will be seen, correspond exactly with the households
descended from one grandfather (A in the genealogy), and the senior
group is evidently the one which may be expected to include a genera
tion more than the others, while we are expressly told that the Geilfine is
first in dignity. Supposing the Irish fines to be organized like a Chinese
family, the Geilfine, or " hand family," would consist of A, B, C, D and
E ; and the other three, respectively, of C secundus, son of B primus, D and
E ; of B secundus, C, D, and E ; and of C secundus, son of B secundus, D
and E ; the latter of vvhich groups are less nearly related than the former
to the four junior members of the Geilfine. The person who might come
into the Geilfine so as to make it excessive would be D secundus, son of C
primus and grandson of B primus, and such a younger son, according to
the Chinese family system, forms a new household ; according to the Irish
statement, he may either form a new Geilfine division, or take the place of
one of the other branches, leaving the most remote to " pass out of the
organization altogether."
Worked out for nine generations instead of five, the genealogical tree
gives us sixteen "neighbourhoods" or contemporary groups of relatives,
and taking the estimate of five families to each, the descendants of one
ancestor, through the nine branches, would give approximately a hundred
households or four villages. The way in which our authorities seem to
hesitate between three and five, or between three threes and two fives as
the component elements of the tsing, would be quite explained if we sup
pose that it was optional with the officials to count only those families
which included the normal three generations, though for fiscal and agricul
tural purposes the unit was the married couple or fu, answering to the
newly formed " hand family " of the Irish code. Probably on the average
the descendants of each A would not form more than about four of these
complete households of three generations, though the descendants of each
B might include four or five natural families of parents and children. But
5 x 16 = 80, and no doubt for practical purposes the agricultural hundred
corresponded nearly enough to the settlement required by any clan which
had held together for the classic nine generations. Nine is the favourite
Chinese number, and hence, no doubt, the apportionment of the nine
squares and the enumeration of nine relationships ; but the Chinese have
neither the Hindoo penchant for large numbers, nor the Irish taste for
elaborate numerical calculations, and they show no predilection of
multiples of nine.

APPENDICES.

495

The extraordinarily strict rule of exogamy enforced in modern China
must have originated at a time when the relatives living together in the
same enclosure were of different degrees of nearness, but dwelt so entirely
on the same footing that brothers and sisters could not be distinguished
from cousins. A few examples of the evils of too close interbreeding or
the marriage of unduly near relations would suffice to set up a rational and
ineradicable prejudice among the people against any approach to those
habits, which could only be absolutely excluded by a very strict rule, in
the face of the opportunities of intercourse afforded in patriarchal families
like those described.

APPENDIX L.
Vol. ii., p. 123.
Chinese Dynasties.

DYNASTY.

SOVEREIGNS.

3EGAN B.C.

Hia 

17

2205

Shang or Yin ....

2S

1766
Chow 
34
1122
T'sin 
5
225
Han (former or Western Han) .
14
206
Later or Eastern Han
12
25
The Three Kingdoms
1 1
A.D.
221
Minor Han
2
221
Wei ....
• 5
220
Wu . ...
4
229
Western T'sin ....
4
265
Eastern T'sin ....
11
3!7
North and South
58
420
Northern or first Wei
15
386
Western Wei
3
535
Eastern Wei
1
534
Northern Chi .
7
55°
Northern Chow
5
557
Southern Sung .
9
420
Ch'i.
7
479
Liang ....
6
502
Ch'en
S
557
Souy ....
4
589
T'ang 
22
6l8
The Five Posterior Dynasties .
13
907
Liang ....
2
907
T'ang ....
• 4
923
T'sin ....
2
936
Han 
2
947
Chow
3
95i
Liaio ...
9
' 907
Western Liaio .
5
1125
Kin.
10
in5
Sung ....
9
960
Southern Sung
9
1127
Yuen
9
1280
Ming
17
1368
T'sing
9
1644-1894
APPENDIX M.
Vol. ii., p. 77.
The Use of the Staff
The Egyptian figure, with a long rod, like an alpenstock, in the right
hand, is familiar to the most superficial student of the wall pictures. It is
so characteristic that the late M. Chabas wrote a short monograph Sur
Fusage des Batons de main chez les Hebreux et dans I'ancienne Egypte
(Annales du Muse'e Guimet, vol. i., 1880), illustrated by a number of Old
Testament texts, alluding to the varied associations of the staff, from the
shepherd's crook to the royal sceptre and the magician's rod. The staff is
reckoned as no less indispensable to the traveller than his shoes, and it is
apparently the same utensil which serves the overseer to urge on the work
man, and the teacher the pupil whose '' ears are in his back." But there
is also an association of rank or authority with its possession. 'Ihe per
mission to use the baton du commandement, which was expressly granted to
Amten, was presumably a prerogative of those born to hereditary power ;
and a high sacerdotal functionary boasts of being " the staff of the king
within the temples."
The handle of the staff was commonly ornamented and frequently in
scribed ; the bronze l ferrule of that of Pepi, bearing his cartouche, is now
at the British Museum. A portion of the gilt staff of Amenhotep III. of the
Eighteenth Dynasty is among the treasures of the Leyden Museum, and the
Louvre has the handles of staves once belonging to Seti I. and Rameses II.
Among private possessions of this kind, one belonging to a scribe attached
to the worship of the solar disk is of interest, as the only surviving proof
of the existence of a temple of this heretical cult at Memphis. Age as
well as rank gave a title to the honorific use of the staff, as appears from
several inscriptions, such as: "An excellent staff to begin old age with,
in the great hall of the temple, and to go forth with daily in going to see
Ptah of the White Wall (i.e. the citadel of Memphis); this is said for the
benefit of the chief scribe of the God Aoh, Anoui." A shorter staff— or
yard measure — belonged to a person of the same name, who is designated
as "lord of the ell, whom his master always loves," and described as the
1 Professor Flinders Petrie's discovery of copper tools at Kahun has led to a more
accurate method of describing the early metal objects found in Egypt. A small piece
of bronze rod, almost certainly of the 4th Dynasty, has been found, but no bronze tools
earlier than the 18th Dynasty; and, in the absence of analysis, the term "bronze"
applied to such objects as the fragment of Pepi's staff means only that they appear to be
made of some copper alloy.
VOL. II. — p.c. *» K K

49S APPENDICES.
"runner" of Pharaoh. An ebony staff at the British Museum bears the
name of " Bai, royal messenger in Mesopotamia," possibly a friend and
minister of the last king of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Amon and Ptah
are invoked by artists of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties to bestow
life, health, and strength on the owners or makers of other ornamental
walking sticks. Many other inscriptions are known, but differ little from
those in general use for commemorative purposes.
That the use of the staff in ancient China was in all ways similar to that
in Egypt appears from the fact that inscriptions engraved upon ancient
staffs have been preserved (Chinese Classics, iv. i. pp. 16, 17). But the
inscriptions themselves are of a disinterested moral kind. Here is one : —
" Helping a man, be not rash ;
Holding up a man, do not wrong."
And again : — " When are you in peril ?
In giving way to anger.
When do you lose the way ?
In indulging in your lusts.
When do you forget your friends ?
Among riches and honours."
In this case one might imagine that there is an allusion to a threefold use
of the staff : as a weapon, as a walking-stick, and as a token of honour.
The legend as to the general disuse of the staff in China shows that a
certain idea of dignity or sanctity, or perhaps of national pride, attached
to it.
In rough or mountainous country the use of a long walking-stick is so ob
vious that it would not seem to call for remark or need explanation ; yet it
is not by any means the universal custom of mountaineers to " always have a
stick in their right hand," as Schweinfurth says of the men of Sokotra, and
as was also observed of the Guanches. Wellsted speaks in the same way
of " the crooked staff vvhich " So-and-so " carries in common with all other
Arabs." And on reflection it is not difficult to see how the habit of carry
ing a staff — which implies the absence of any other occupation for the
right hand— was necessarily disused in classes that required the right hand
to be at liberty for grasping a tool or performing other laborious tasks.
The staff is a symbol of dignified leisure in a civilized man, who is as free
from servile work as the wild Arab of the desert.
Naturally the last surviving traces of a lost custom will be found in con
nexion with religious observances, like the procession des Baguettes Blanches
(to which my attention has been called by Mr. W. H. Rylands, the secre
tary of the Society of Biblical Archaeology), held on Whit Monday at Chalons
sur Marne. Down to 1605, a procession of unquestionably heathen origin
to l'Etoile a Foret was held on the Eve of St John Baptist's Day, and

APPENDICES. 499
orthodox moderns, (Cartulaires de I'Evecl/e et du Chapitre Saint- E^tienne de
Chalons sur Marne, Ed. de Barthelemy, p. 91) who rejoice over the aboli
tion of all such archaic rites, are careful to explain that the long white rods
borne in the surviving procession are only a souvenir of the time when the
roads outside Chalons were so bad that the priests could not walk along
them without the help of such staves. Mud, however, like mountains,
may exist without giving rise to the inveterate habit of walking, sitting,
and standing "with the staff in the right hand," and the question whether
this is not one of the minor characteristics that may be relied on as an
indication of race is worth considering,

INDEX.

( Unless other-vise specified, entries from pp. I to 225 refer to E%ypl ; pp. 229 lo 379 to
Babylonia ; and those in Vol. II. pp. 1 to 383 to China.)

Aah-hotep, Queen, 403, 406 n.
Aahmes, founder of 17th Dyn., 119.
Aahmes, "Beautiful Companion of,"
her mummy discovered, 120.
Aahu, the fields of, 151, 152.
Abbott papyrus, 59, 165.
Abijatha, coins of King, 508.
Abraham and the kings, verisimili
tude of the story of, 274.
Abstract deities worshipped under
6th Dyn., 153.
Abulfeda, ii. 217.
Abundance and industry associated in
Egypt, 151.
Abydos, ancient holy city of, 19, 21.
Abyssinia, Sabaan inscriptions from,
519-
Accepting and establishing as wife,
206.
Acci, foster-father of Sargon, 275.
Accumulation of wealth discouraged
in Egypt, 161.
Acquired property virtually secured
to children in Egypt, 216.
Acquisitions of abdicated father go to
family funds, 458.
Acquisitions of junior members of
tarwads, how disposed of, 576.
Acquisitions, Thesawaleme on, 559.
Action by royal scribe against priest
of Mut, 60.
Actresses and courtezans, ii. 220.
Ada, grant of lands confiscated from,
344-
Adinna, diminutive of Ada, 429.
Adopted sons of eunuchs, ii. 137.
Adoption " by ten hands" in Malabar,
548.
Adoption, deed of, in Egypt, 219 ;
deeds of, in Babylonia, 363, 370,
378 ; Gortyn laws on, 481.
Adulteration forbidden in Chow Li, ii.
56 ; by trade guilds, 320 ; penal
ties for, 367.

286.
Advance of rent like Malabar loan and
lease, ii. 358.
^Elius Gallus, Arabian expedition of,
498.
yEthalians, 478, 479.
Agade, Sargon, king of, 256.
Agate found at Nipur, 250.
Age for marriage in ancient China, ii.
Agency, doctrine of, in Babylonia, 351.
Agglomeration of land in China, ii.
114, 151 ; under the Mongols,
229 ; laws in restraint of, 363.
Agglomerators, struggle between the
peasantry and, ii. 252.
Agrarian innovations of state of T'sin,
ii. 98-100 ; extended to rest of
empire, 101.
Agrarian legislation of T'sin and
Wei, ii. 126.
Agreement to cultivate, temp. Ptolemy
Euergetes, 189.
Agricultural imagery in the Ritual,
151.
Agricultural interest, rate of, in Egypt
and Babylonia, 193, 332-4.
" Agricultural Precepts " of ancient
Babylonia, 335.
Agricultural produce, rate of, per head
in China and France, ii. 305, 306.
Agriculture and manufactures, com
bination of, ii. 304-7.
Agriculture, Carthaginian treatises on,
408, 409.
Agriculturist free to migrate, ii. 56.
Agu, the Great or elder, 286.
Agu-amir or Agu-a-shi, Agukakrime
descended from, 287.
Agukakrime, inscription of, 286.
Ahaz, king of Judah, 305.
Ahmed (Achmath or Ahama), Kubla's
finance minister, ii. 225, 227.

502

INDEX.

Ahmes, scribe, accused of not having
apprentice taught, 106.
Ahouit and ahouiti, antiquity and
meaning of terms, 140.
Aiklon in Sparta, 470.
Akar-sallu, battle between Kardunias
and Assyria at, 288.
Akbar, Mahomedan merchant at court
of, on China, ii. 269.
Akhir el Benat, " Defender of the
village maiden," 531.
Akkad = Northern and Central Baby
lonia, 264.
Akkad to destroy Kutu, Lullubu and
Sutu, etc., 285.
Akkadian and Chinese roots, Mr.
Ball's comparison of, ii. 480-7.
Akko, murder of Babylonians at, com
plained of to Egyptian king, 292.
Akouta, prince of the Kin, ii. 172.
Aksum, advanced agriculture around,
' 510; decoration of monoliths at,
SU.
Akurga, king and patesi, 262, 263.
Alabaster bas-reliefs, crude brick walls
lined with, 249.
Alabaster statue of nomarch dragged
with ropes, 102.
Alala, the eagle, beloved of Istar, 250.
Alambra, necropolis of, 405.
Alarodian and Hamitic civilization,
common points of, 424.
Alarodian, term for certain archaic
European stocks, 384.
Alashan, heat and drought in, ii. 4.
Alasia, king of, untranslated letter
from, 293.
Albanians, ancient and modern, 456.
Alexander and the Rhodians, 442.
Allotments, village, in China, ii. 45.
Alman, land of, 286.
Al-Mukarram, son of Lady Asma, 522.
Alphabet of Lemnos inscription, 418.
Alusharshid dedicates spoils of Elam
to Bel, 254.
Amanum, mountain of cedars, 269.
Amar-muballit, father of Hammurabi,
280.
Amasis (Aahmes), anecdote concern
ing, 47 ; priest's son dispossessed
ty> 53 ! endows his mercenaries
with temple lands, 61 ; mother of,
120; Greek mercenaries of, 134;
secularization of temple lands,
179 ; alliance with Lydia, 317.
Amathus, tombs at, 405.
Amazons, legends of, and localities
assigned to, 454, 455.
Ambattha Sutta quoted, 108.
Amber, early trade in, 401.
Amen, inscription of, 84, 96, 112.

Amenemhat I., Instructions of, 78;
disturbed reign of, 119.
Amenemhat III., Hammamat quarry-
men temp., 1 10.
Amenemhat IV., married and reigned
with his sister, 119.
Amenemhat, 12th Dyn., stele of Prince,
160.
Amenemheb, general of Thothmes
III., on his troops, 142.
Amenhotep I. reigns with his mother
and marries his sister, 119 ; ad
dressed as son-in-law of Tushratta,
293-
Amenhotep III., Semitic wife of, 120 ;
Nimmuriya of cuneiform corre
spondence, 292 ; dispute about
dowry of Babylonian princess
with, 294.
Amenhotep IV., Napkhururiya of
cuneiform correspondence, 292 ;
letter from Tushratta to, 293.
Amenhotep appealed to by a workman
about a house, 59, 186 ; called
"king of the city," 59.
Amenhotep, architect of statue of
" Memnon," 102 ; surnamed the
Wise, temple of Kak founded by,
159-
Amenhotep,chief priest of Amon under
Rameses III., 178.
Amenophis, see Amenhotep.
Amenophis the scribe, author of Table
of precedence, 76.
Amenti, the, 48, 50, 151.
Amherst, embassy of Lord, ii. 289.
Amiaud on comparative chronology of
Egypt and Babylonia, 270.
Ammiditana, contract tablets of, 284.
Ammizadugga, contract tablets of, 284.
Amon, hymn to, 51, 57; of Thebes
called suten, not erpa, 117; patron
of 4 nomes, 150.
Ampere on Mehemet Ali, 75 ; on caste
in Egypt, 126.
Amphictyohic body, 422, 423.
Amraphel identified with father of
Hammurabi, 258.
Amten, 4th Dyn., officer of Senofera,
49, "3. 140.
Amu (Syrians) in wall paintings at
Beni Hassan, 97.
Amusements, modern Chinese, ii. 381.
Amyot's memoir on interest in China,
184, ii. 323 ; on Chinese meaning
of tributary, 130 ; on credit of
Mantchu soldiery, 279 ; on family
intercourse, 295 ; on tenancy in
China, 358.
Anaia, or "protection," of Kabyle
tribes, 536.

INDEX.

5°3

Ana-ittisu tablets, 367.
Analects, Confucian, ii. 43.
Anandravan, Nair " next relation," 556.
Anarchy, preached by Chuang-tze, ii.
93. 94-
Anatomical treatise translated into
Mantchu, ii. 280.
" Ancestor," slave claims to be son of
an, 357-
Ancestor worship in China, 152, 154.
Ancestral halls and burial grounds of
great families, ii. 360.
Ancestral property, Gortyn code on
sale of, 4S1 ; Spartan law against
sale of, 4S5.
''Ancestral usage" of Rhodians to
support the poor, 441.
Ancient deeds with more ancient seals,
"- 359-
Ancient Empire, religious feeling
during, 170; six dynasties of, ii.
408.
Ancient kingdoms of South Arabia,
496.
Ancient laws of Ireland on stock
farming, 135.
Andorre, duration of families in, 213.
Andreia, common meals in Crete
called, 471.
Andrew, Bishop of Zayton (Chinchow),
ii. 231.
Anglo-Saxon approach to Welsh mort-
gage. ii. 418.
Ani, maxims of scribe, 46, 52, 77, 81,
88, 112, 144.
Animal worship in Egypt, 145 ; faint
traces of, in China, 148, ii. 37 ;
not confounded with ancestor, 147.
Animals, human qualities idealized in,
146 ; feeding the sacred, in Egypt,
148 ; Lady Duff Gordon on, 149 ;
penalties for neglect of imperial,
ii- 373-
Anna or Anu, the sky god, 239.
Annals of the Bamboo Books, ii. 28 ;
477-
Annals record the name of leading
scholars in examination lists, ii.
209.
Annanadi=Anja-nadi, or five rivers,
546.
Annual tenancy of cultivators, 341,
A 345>
Annunaki, spirits of earth, 233.
Anson, Sir George, in the China seas,
ii. 272, 288.
Antef, nth Dynasty poem of, 122.
Anti-Buddhist edicts and memorials,
ii. 125, 145-9.
Antichresis, origin of, in Babylonia
and Egypt, 183.

Antichresis tacita, ii. 146 ; among the
Basques, 462.
Antichreticmortgages, earliest example
°*3 322, 331 ; terms of various,
34o, 355, 356; perhaps referred
to in inscription of Halicarnassus,
436 ; forbidden by Georgian code,
459 ! Syro-Roman code on, 490 ;
developed into rent in feudal
state, 572 ; the only kind lawful
in China, ii. 362 ; see also Welsh
mortgages and vifgage.
Anti-Christian edicts and memorials,
ii. 281.
Antidamas, description of, 408.
Anti-foreign, conservative feeling of
Chinese undergraduates, ii. 380.
Anti-Malthusianism in ancient Egypt,
Antiquity of written deeds in Baby
lonia, 191.
Antonia, wife of Pythodorus, 439.
Anubis called Chief of the Thirty, 56.
Anzan, country of Cyrus, 23 ; nucleus
of Persian kingdom, 318.
Appeals, system of judicial, ii. 375.
" Appointinga successorto the family,"
ii- 345-
Apprentices, number of, limited by
trade guilds, ii. 319.
Apprenticeship in ancient Egypt, 106,
107 ; of slaves, 358.
Apries, related to the mother of
Amasis, 120.
Arab princess and gods restored by
Esarhaddon, 313 ; war maiden,
529,531 ; Amazons, 528, 529; trade
with Southern China, ii. 215 ; tra
vellers in China, ii. 140-142.
Arabia Felix, on the lucky (right) side,
266 ; date of its prosperity, 511.
Arabia, first settlements in South, 270.
Arabian campaigns of Tiglath-
pileser III., 306 ; Arabian and
Chinese conservatism, 496 ; Ara
bian monarchies, character of,
502 ; Arabian campaigns of Se
nacherib, Esarhaddon, and As
surbanipal, 511.
Arable land contrasted in Babylonian
inscriptions with towns, 324.
Arabs taught to take "squeezes "of
inscriptions, 510 ; world-wide
wanderings of, ii. 236.
Arad Samas appears to marry his
sisters, 369.
Arad Ulmassitu appears as landlord
and tenant, 336.
Aradus, walls of, 405.
Arch, not really understood in Assyria,
250.

5°4

INDEX.

Archaic art, mannerisms of, 404; usages
found on same lines as archaic
monuments, 416.
Archaic customs, evidence of, 383.
Archaeological discoveries, bearing of
recent, 383 ; evidence of Leuco-
Syrian influence on Greeks, 415.
Archbishop of Tournon, mission of,
ii. 278.
Archery and warlike arts, examina
tions in, ii. 212.
Architect, office of, 53 ; architect and
builders in Egypt, 101 ; architect
to Amenhotep, in; inscription
of twin brothers, 119.
Architecture of Babylonia and Assyria,
249.
Ardys, son of Gyges, acknowledges
supremacy of Assurbanipal, 311.
Area of town lots, how measured, 354.
Argistis, king ot Armenia, conquers
Hittite country, 302.
Aristotle on possessions, I ; Aristotle
and Kallisthenes on Babylonian
chronology, 256 ; his description
of Carthaginian constitution, 391 ;
on Locri, 417 ; on laws of Cha-
rondas, 450.
Arithmetical calculations of Egyptian
scribes, 54.
Armanakarsalu, 289.
Armenia submits to Assurnasirabal,
298; Assyrian campaigns in, 301-
305 ; Sargon's campaigns against,
312.
Armenian kings, list of, 302 ; Ar
menian succession, laws of Jus
tinian on, 559; virgins dedicated
to the temple, 457.
Armenians, photographs of modern,
304-
Army, payment of Chinese, ii. 152 n.
Arsapi ? Reseph, letter in ? Hittite,
by king of, 293.
Art, early Egyptian and Babylonian,
compared, 257 ; of Sargon, archaic,
266 ; of South Arabia, 509.
Artesian well in Phoenicia, 406.
Artizans, work of the, ii. 60-62.
Arverni, Macedonian coins copied by,
402.
Asaba, those who go to battle together,
524.
Asaris, villain in Story of the Peasant, 86.
Asb'en, men of, join their wives'
tribes, 539.
Ashurim=Asur of Minaean inscrip
tions, 500.
Asia Minor, archaic elements in cul
ture of, 387; difference between S.
& W. coasts of, 415.

Askelon, men of, on Egyptian monu
ments, 268.
Asma, the Lady, 521, 522.
Asnunnak = Southern Babylonia, 287.
Aspalut, maternal ancestry of King,
53°-
Assa, 5th Dyn. Egyptian king, 23,
43 ; works the Hammamat quar
ries, 95 ; sends expedition to land
of Punt, 497.
" Assessors of taxes " to claim Egyp
tian endowments diverted from
founder's purpose, 1 59.
Assets of all kinds interchangeable in
Babylonia, 351.
Association, tendency to, in China, ii.
3«8.
As Sulayhi, king of Yemen, 522.
Assur, mentioned in Babylonian epos,
285 ; king of, claimed as tributary
by Thothmes III., 291.
Assurbanipal destroys temples and
tombs in Elam, 233 ; bi-lingual
tablets of, 236 ; colophon on bi
lingual tablet of, 242 ; recovers
image carried off by Kudurnan-
chundi, 254 ; Armenian ambassa
dor to, 304 ; account of Gyges,
king of Lydia, by, 310 ; Egyptian
expedition of, 313; meaning of
name, 313 ; Arabian campaigns
of, 314; Arabian conquests of, 499.
Assurbelkala, son of Tiglath-pileser,
296.
Assurdanan, king of Assyria, 291, 295.
Assurisisi, king of Assyria, 295.
Assurnadinahi, father of Assuruballit,
288 ; receives twenty talents of
gold from Egypt, 292.
Assurnasirapal restores Caleh, 296,
298 ; his inscriptions, 297, 298.
Assurnisisu, king of Assyria, 288.
Assuruballit, his dealings with Baby
lonia, 288 ; writes desiring gold
from Egypt, 292 ; letter from, in
Gizeh Museum, ii.426.
Assyria, need for irrigation in, 229 ;
cardinal points in, 265.
Assyrian deeds, earliest, 345 ; Assyrian
monarchy, causes of its rapid de
struction, 314, 315; records pre
served by rapid ruin of cities, 315.
Astrologers, important low caste in
Malabar, 564.
Astrology, Chinese scholars' report on,
ii. 132.
Astronomical knowledge of Canary
islanders, 543; of ancient Chinese,
ii. 23 ; clans, 24 ; Astronomical
Work, i. 278, 285, ii. 436 ; obser
vations in Peru, ii. 450.

INDEX.

5°5

Astronomy, rudiments of, taught
throughout Malabar, 564.
Asylum, right of, possessed by slaves,
340 ; asylum for aged slaves, 356 ;
right of, possessed by Oman
temple of Hekate, 419 n.
Athena as Mentor, 451.
Athenaeus, describes Sacaea after Ber
osus, 244.
Athenian antichresis, 326 ; owls, Him-
yarite imitation of, 50S ; widely
spread, ii. 450 ; Athenian women,
legend of disfranchisement of, i.
423-
Atmosphere and climate, influence of,
on Egyptian monuments, 101.
Attar of various towns, invoked in in
scriptions, 501.
Attipet ola, or final sale of land, 575.
Attiret, F., portrait of Kien-lung taken
by, ii. 286.
Altiris, or seashore assemblies at
Minicoy, 567.
Augustinian and Franciscan missions
to China, ii. 265.
" Authors' association " prosecuted, ii.
121.
Automela? attu or ettu mala, 546.
Auxiliary troops in Egypt, 133.
Average length of reigns, ii. 497.
" Avoiding the name," ii. 25.
Azariah, king of Judah, his alliance
sought by Hittite federation, 305.
Azdjers, "ladies who give birth to
chiefs " among the, 539.
Azupirani, birthplace of Sargon, 275.

Baal's land = that naturally irrigated,
525-
Babylon prosperous and independent
while obscure, 299 ; captured un
injured by Cyrus, 319 ; becomes
a bye-word for poverty, 353.
Babylonia, one of the great seats of
archaic civilization, 3 ; connection
between China and, 31 ; ii. 480 ff.
Babylonian art, earliest specimens of,
257, 261 ; epos, passage from,
285 ; the French of the old world,
295 ; Babylonian cities submit to
Pul, 304; trade developed under
Nebuchadnezzar, 318 ; chronicle
on Nabonidus' offences, 329 ;
citizens normally owned land in
the country, 324 ; deeds informal
and equitable, 348 ; Malabar par
allel to, 570 ; mortgages, possible
trace of, in Arabia, 524 ; Baby
lonian and Chinese character for
well and enclosure, ii. 42 ; Baby

lonian dynasties and dates, ii.
App. D. pp. 4^4-432-
Babylonian Talmud, quotation from,
19S ; Babylonian kings, two lists
of, 257.
Bad contracts void by Egyptian and
Irish law, 215.
Bad debts, Chinese merchants cancel,
''• 335
Badakshan, native land of lapis-lazuli,
232 ; village clusters in, ii. 43, 44.
Baguettes blanches, procession of the,
ii. 497.
Bahrein, island of, 25 ; with springs
like that of Panchaea, 515 ; tombs
examined on, 516 ; inhabitants of,
called Nabatasans, 520 ; Bahrein
and Oman, cosmopolitanism of,
520.
Bainuter = Binothris of Manetho, 117.
Balearic isles, status of women in,
460.
Ball, Rev. C. J., on Akkadian and
Chinese characters, 32, ii. 480-
487.
Bamboo books, ii. 27, 476 ; use of, in
China, 49.
Banias, citadel of, 405.
Bankers, Babylonian, forestall clear
ing-house system, 321 ; landed
property held by, 324 ; warehouse
their clients' valuables, 353.
Bankers' guild at Shanghai, ii. 339-40.
Bankruptcy rare and disgraceful, ii.
340.
Banks, resorted to by all classes in
China, ii. 330 ; facilities given to
small capitalists, 331.
Banquets, cost of Chinese, ii. 316.
Barachiel, suit concerning, 357.
Barbarians, laws on trade with, ii.
363 ; against "plotting to acquire
land from," 364.
Barbers' union at Wenchow, ii. 320.
Barbosa on Malabar, 485.
Bareas of East Africa, 531, 533.
Barrage, natural and artificial Nile,
ii. 410, 413-
Basins, irrigation system of, ii. 411.
Basque and Malayali parallel to Egyp
tian marriage contracts, 211.
Basque custom, 212, 460-463 ; Basque
law, hypothetical approximation
to, in Sparta, 483-5 ; domestic
customs compared with those of
Malabar, 556 ; rule against inter
marriage of eldest children, 213,
558.
Basques, partnership of elder child
among, 123 ; primogeniture with
out distinction of sex among, 124.

So6

INDEX.

Bas-reliefs in alabaster line brick
walls, 249.
Bassorah, Persian Gulf once extended
above, 229.
Bau, the goddess, elder daughter of
Anna, 239.
Bazi, sons of, 297.
Begas, female descent among, 530.
Bek-en-Amon, letter from the scribe,
174-
Bel, the king of Babylon " takes the
hands of," 305, ii. 241.
Belkhanos, a Cretan god, 471.
Bell, John, of Antermony, ii. 277 n.
Belnadinapli, or aplu, king of 4th
Babylonian Dyn., 295 ; King of
Pasi' Dyn., 343.
Belnirari, son of Assuruballit, wars
against Kurigalzu II. , 288, 289.
Belsunu, partner of Nebo-ahi-iddin,
349-
Benevolence and economy to be com
bined by rulers, ii. 32 ; a duty of
traders, 361.
Benevolent institutions of modern
China, ii. 377.
Beni Amer of East Africa, 531.
Beni Hassan, 12th Dyn. tombs of
Khnum-hotep, etc., at, 80, 156,
163.
Berbers and Basques, customary codes
of, 38, 461, 536.
Berbers, Ibn Khaldoun's History of,
407 ; debts repaid by, 451.
Berosus, chronology of, 257, 258.
Berscheh, 12th Dyn., pictures at, 102.
Betrothal, supposed allusion to, in
Ptah-hotep, 201, 205 ; betrothal or
secret marriage among Albanians,
456 ; distinct from marriage, in
Syro-Roman code, 493 ; a year
before marriage, in East Africa,
531 ; a distinct stage in marriage
contracts, 536 ; traces of this in
Malabar, ii. 473, 474.
Biaina, native name of Armenia, 301.
Bibliographies, Chinese, ii. 479.
Bilingual lists of Babylonian kings'
names, 257, 259, ii. 425 ; texts of
Assurbanipal's library, i. 314 ;
syllabaries and phrase books, 327.
Bills of exchange issued in China, ii.
193, '94-
Bingani, son of a king of Agade, 266.
Birds, their flight a guide to mariners,
519-
Births, registration of, in ancient
China, ii. 71.
Bishareen tribes of East Africa, 531.
Bit Humri, a name for Palestine, 299.
Black-haired people, name for ancient

Akkadians, 26 ; do. of Chinese,
ii. 21.
Black-headed people, an epithet for
the Chinese, 26 ; black-headed
race, 276.
Black land of Egypt, 65.
Blacksmiths' union of Wenchow, ii.
3I9- • • - , j ¦
Block printing introduced, 11. 209 ;
described by Semedo, 270.
Blue eyes in Arabia, 277 ; blue-eyed
Arab heroine, 529.
" Blue like the sky between clouds
after rain," china ordered, like,
ii. 166.
Blue-stone of Babel = lapis-lazuli, 232.
" Boarding out " of royal cattle in
Egypt, Ireland, and Tatary, 135 ;
in ancient China, ii. 52 ; in
modern China, 373.
Boards of modern Chinese govern
ment and their ancient counter
parts, ii. 23, 376.
Boatmen, earnings of Chinese, ii. 313.
Boats, with eye in prow, in Cypriote
tombs, 405 ; used as shops, ii.
318.
Bocchoris, or Bok-en-ranf, legislation
of, 192, 193; succeeded by Sa-
bako, 306.
Boghaz Keui, remains of, 387, 412,
414.
Bohemia, annals of, by John of Flor
ence, ii. 235.
Book of Rites, see Li Ki.
Book of the Dead, 73.
Books, " steward of the house of
books," 55.
Border states in feudal China, ii. 80.
Bornu, constitution of kingdom of, 558.
Bottomry, loans on, 398 ; forbidden
by Rhodian law, 399, 444.
Boundary stones, temp. Marduknadi-
nahi, 343.
Bows, manufacture of, ii. 62.
Branch families, foundation of, ii. 69,
492.
Breaking a plate with guest friend, 410.
Brehon Laws, 135, ii. 491.
Bribery in ancient Egypt, 57.
Brick tablets, use of, in contracts, 321,
327-
Bricks, burnt and sun-dried, 248.
Bride revisits her own family after
marriage, ii. 67 ; cases when
" she will not go," 68.
Bronze, generally used in Middle Em
pire, 99 ; statues of, 102; weapons
of, with iron core, 232 ; early use
of alloys for, 400 ; early examples
of, ii. 497 n.

INDEX.

5°7

" Brother to brother should be loving,"
338.
Brothers, field owned jointly by two,
and pledged by one, 216 ; division
of property between, 371 ; brothers
and sisters, inheritance from, in
Thesawaleme, 560 ; rule of suc
cession among, ii. 346.
Bubastis, kings of, 316.
Buddhism in China, ii. 95, 109, 124,
125, 145, 146.
Buddhist view of Kshatriyas and
Brahmins, 108 ; theology, ex
aminations held in, ii. 144 ; priest
cremated, 219; works, (Mongol
edition of, in letters of gold, 230 ;
virtues and crimes, ii. 37S.
Budget of a Chinese peasant under
the Hans, ii. 113; under the
present Dyn., 299.
Bulls, symbolism of their images, 249.
Bunanitum, suit between widow and
deceased husband's brother, 358,
376.
Bundahesh, reference to China in, ii.
149 n.
Burckhardt on dwindling of the kas-
saba, 74.
Burial place granted to Jesuits for
Ricci, ii. 270.
Burial places, sale of, in Egypt, 166,
169 ; choice of, in China, ii. 133 ;
burial societies in China, 377.
Burlingame, Mr., on Chinese, ii. 85.
Burnaburias, his presents of lapis-
lazuli to Egyptian king, 251 ;
dated by Nabonidus, 254 ; King
of Kardunias, 288 ; marries the
daughter of an Assyrian king,
289 ; corresponds with Amen
hotep IV., 292.
Bursin I., inscription of King, 267,
272.
Bursurasur, king of Assyria, his deal
ings with Babylonia, 288.
Butha, maxims of customary law, 532.
Byblos, temple of, 404.
Byssus workers, marriage contract of,
207.
Byzantium, war of Rhodes with, 443.

Cadets, position of Basque, 213.
Cadi forbidden to buy or sell in
Arabia, 527.
Cai-fung-fu invested by the Kin, ii.
174 ; captured by Mantchu Ta
tars, 249.
Cais ibn Al Khatum leaves a garden
to supply annuity for his mother,
524.

Calendar, Chinese and Sumerian, 278 ;
regulation of, a royal prerogative
in China, ii. 23, 24; of the Hia
Dyn., 71 ; Christians employed to
correct Chinese, 267 ; Akkadian
and Egyptian, ii. 437.
Calicut, freedom of trade at, 548.
Caliph Galun = Harun al Raschid, ii.
.139-
Caliphate, embassies from, ii. 215.
Caliphs, Chinese assist Cashgar
against, ii. 139.
Cambalec = Khanbalig= Peking.
Cambyses, training school for scribes
under, 53, 55 ; Egyptian legend
concerning, 1 16.
Camels, chief article of Towarek
property, 540.
Campsay, see Kinsay.
Canaanites and Sidonians, 389 ;
Canaanite = merchant, 389 n.
Canal inscription of Hammurabi, 283 ;
canals and water courses in
ancient China, ii. 63 ; Grand
Canal projected by Kubla, 244.
Canal, traces of great, near Telloh,
264; canal from the upper Zab to
Caleh, 298 ; Grand Canal, ii. 224.
Canalization in ancient Babylonia,
264.
Canals, construction of, 247 ; require
restoration, 248 ; inscription of
Clerk of the canals at Abydos, 79.
Canary islands, walled enclosures in,
446 ; population and customs of,
542-4.
Cane, derivation of the word, 231.
Canonical books of China, ii. 474.
Cantabri, Strabo on the, 213 ; marriage
customs of the, 460.
Canton, foreign trade at, ii. 139 ;
annals of,on Portuguese "tribute,"
ii. 262 ; old resident at, on
Chinese trade, ii. 336, 337.
Capital and income of peasant family
in China, ii. 299.
Capital crimes rare in China, ii. 374.
Capital, Tai-tsou-sung on choice of a,
ii. 168.
Capitalists, early Egyptian, 71.
Capitation tax, three grades of, in later
Egypt, 138.
Cappadocians or "white Syrians," 386.
Caps sold by the thousand at proper
season, ii. 338.
Captivity of Jehoiachin and Zedekiah,
3'7-
Caralis, remains at, 415.
Caravan routes across Arabia, 503.
Carchemish made an Assyrian pro
vince, 312.

5°8

INDEX.

Cardinal points in Babylonia and
China, 31, 265.
Caria and Lycia, surviving traces of
prehistoric population in, 418.
Carian and Lycian names, 418, 419 ;
" Carian wall " on coast of Maure-
tania, 428 ; Carian and Lycian
custom, 428, 438; Carian priests
praised for their liberalities, 431 ;
modern Carian's regard for the
mother, 435 ; Carian Jupiter
worshipped by three nations, 514.
Carpini, John, of Piano, ii. 216.
Carriage of letters and baggage in
CJiina, ii. 341, 342.
" Carrying of cloth to exchange it for
silk," ii. 324.
Carthage, Aristotle's description of,
390 ; houses six stories high
at, 406.
Carthaginian tombs, 405 ; soup, 409 ;
Cretan dish resembling, 482.
Caste unknown in monumental Egypt,
108 ; Ampere on, 126.
Castiglione, F., employed as an artist,
ii. 286.
Casting money, mode of, in China,
ii. 155, 159.
Cathay, empire of Khitai Tatars, ii.
215.
Cato on Latin peasantry, 410 n.
Cats, cultus of, in modern Egypt, 149.
Cattle farming in Egypt, 79, 82, 83 ;
Carthaginian treatise on, 408, 409 ;
regulations for care of imperial
cattle, ii. 373 ; cattle and horses
not to be killed without a license,
374-
Caucones and Caunians, 451.
Cauconians, 417, 422.
Cavalry officer in Egypt, cost of his
education and hardship of his lot,
138.
Cave dwelling in Asia Minor, 415.
Celibacy imposed on younger sons of
Nambutiri Brahmins, 555 ; as on
Basque cadets, 556 ; celibacy of
Buddhist monks and nuns de
nounced, ii. 146.
Census, objections to, in 9th cent. B.C.,
ii. 71 ; census reports of Tang
Dynasty, 134-6 ; first Ming, 238 ;
census of population and lands,
245 5 in Pep. 453-
Census of Minicoy taken by "certain
women in authority," 567.
Central Asia, physical geography of,
ii. 3 ff. ; campaigns of Han
emperors in, 106 ; Chinese protec
torate over, 245 ; successful
Chinese campaigns in, 287.

Central Cappadocia, people of, 414.
Cephissus, valley of, 421.
Ceylon, notice of sale of land to be
given to heirs, neighbours, etc.,
in, 576.
Cha, medicinal drink called, ii. 264.
Chachperi, children of, divide her in
heritance by lot, 215.
" Cha.1, the mule said the horse is
my," 521.
Chaldaea and Kardunias independent,
299.
Chaldseans, " whose cry is in their
ships," 307.
Chammuragash, see Hammurabi.
Chang-yang, agrarian policy of, ii.
97-9, 187.
Cha'o Tso on crime and poverty, ii.
112, 160.
Chaou-yih, scholarly critic of the Shi,
ii. 479.
Characters, number of Sumerian, 234.
Charibael, King, his relations with
Rome, 508 ; see also Karibail.
Chariot horses of Rameses II., 150.
Chariots, manufacture of, described in
Chow Li, ii. 61.
Charondas of Catana, laws of, 448-50.
Chatramotitae, people of Hadramaut,
509.
Cheapness of all commodities ir,
China, ii. 321.
Chefa'a, Kabyle term for right of pre
emption by kinsmen, etc., 186,
537-
Chera kings, policy of, 564.
Cher-heb or roll-bearer, 63 ; meaning
of term, 167 ; Chinese parallel to,
ii. 36.
Chia, modern Chinese tithing, ii. 356.
Children follow the father's status in
Egypt, 93 ; inheritance of, 206 ;
Children-household = family, in
Urardhian, 303 ; follow the
father's status by Gortyn code,
480 ; " children of his daughter,"
in Syro-Roman code, 488 ; chil
dren to be indulged when young,
ii. 73 ; to be taught manners and
morals at eight, 74.
China of Yung-lo's reign, ii. 237.
China, one of the great seats ot archaic
civilization, 3, 5 ; entrance to
from Central Asia, 175 a land of
difficult access, 18 ; physical
geography of, ii. 8 ; no impass
able natural barriers in, 10; indi
genous inhabitants of, II ; pro
vinces of ancient, 11-15; vacant
lands granted to the destitute in,
141.

INDEX.

5°9

Chinese army, how paid, 130 ; Chinese
¦ Classic and Delphic oracle agreed,
474 ; horror of blue eyes and light
hair, 177 ; Chinese art, self-con
scious and naturalistic, ii. 166 and
n. ; Chinese astronomy, 440 ;
Chinese bride, customary visit to
her parents from, 494 ; characters,
20 ; chivalry, maxims of, 82 ; civi
lization, primary and uniform
character of, 291 ; code, Syro-
Roman parallel to, i. 490, 491 ;
classes, ancient division of, still
recognised, 297 ; classics, copy
of, sent to Tibet, 139 ; Dr. Legge's
edition of, 475 ; coast lands laid
waste to repel pirates, 275 ;
Chinese cycle of sixty years and
days, 434 ; Chinese Diogenes, 48 ;
Chinese dynasties, gradual pro
gress under successive, 123 ; list
of, 495 ; emperor and his feuda
tories, intercourse between, 273 ;
government, policy towards tribu
taries, 247 ; ideal of a ruler's duty,
8: Chinese lady, manners of, 294;
Chinese manners and customs de
scribed by Trigault and Semedo,
268, by Da Cruz and Perera, 270,
271, Martini, 271, 272, and Du
Halde, as by Doolittle, Gray and
Williams ; Chinese merchants,
liberality, courtesy and ability
°f> 334_337 ; Chinese parallel to
Egyptian maxims, i. 44, ii. 76 ;
Chinese penal code, 344 ; pound,
weight of, allowed to vary, 338 ;
proverb on national prosperity,
153 ; Chinese religion, Jesuit
version of, 276 ; society contented,
353-4 ; suits respecting family
property, 352 ; towns, democratic
architecture of, 324 ; Chinese
traders reach Ceylon and the
Euphrates, 140 ; traffic, principal
lines of, 218 ; Chinese Turkestan,
memorial against usury in, 337 ;
Chinese boys not mischievous,
f. . 38t
Chinese, Kabyle, and Egyptian rate of
interest, 193.
Chinese odes against slanderers, 74 ;
mortgage or tien, 184.
Ching, common fields restored in state
of, ii. 99.
Ching-yu or sacred edict, ii. 280.
Chin-tsong, Sung emperor, ii. 170, 187.
Ching-tsong Ming (Wan-lih period),
ii. 248.
Chi-tsong, blue china of, ii. 166 ; on
copper Buddhas, 167.

Chi-tsong Ming, reign of, ii. 247,
24S.
Chnum, Egyptian god, called chief of
the Thirty, 56.
Choachyte's son adopted by a tax col
lector, 127.
Choachytes, archives of a family of,
127 ; choachytes, 164 ; = pourers of
libations, 166 ; contracts of, in
herited, 168 ; corporation or guild
of, 169.
Choo-hi restores public granaries, ii.
191 ; his Commentaries and offi
cial career, 207, 208, 211 ; reform
of examination system, 211 ;
views on educational system of
Chow Li, 212 ; philosophy of,
213 ; Commentary on tlie Shi,
478.
Chou or Te-sin, last (wicked) king of
Yin, 18, 28.
Chow Dynasty, documents of, in Shoo
King, ii. 24 ; founded by King
Wu, 18, 109 ; regulations of, 22 ;
grant to surviving representatives
of, 107.
Chow kings and barbarians, ii. 364.
Chow land system abolished by T'sin,
ii. 98.
Chow Li, Chinese book of Rites, 77 ;
Chow Li or Rites of Chow, ii. 22 :
on public granaries, 35 ; on the
tsing or nine squares, 42 ; on local
organization, 42-44 ; on work for
different seasons, 47 ; on taxes,
50 ; on classes and occupations,
55 ; missing section of, 60 ; traffic
regulations in, 63, 64 ; edited by
Wang Mang, 116 ; on lost pro
perty, 217 ; editions of, 475.
Christianity tolerated in Europeans,
ii. 275 ; a kind of Fo religion,
149, 276.
Chronological list of Assyrian
eponyms, 300.
Chronology of Kassite kings, 287,
288.
Chu, father and daughter, artists in
porcelain, ii. 213.
Chuang-tze, ii. 48 ; on Confucius' fail
ure, 84 ; on contemporary sophists,
88 ; on charity and duty to one's
neighbour, 92 ; on letting mankind
alone, 93 ; on horses, 257, 258 ; on
over-crowding, 381.
Chua-to, patron of medical profession,
ii. 130.
Chumba-ba, Elamite tyrant, 274.
Chung, maiden's rebuke to Mr., ii.
65-
Chung-ne, see Confucius.

510

INDEX.

Chun-ti, Mongol emperor, corresponds
with Pope Benedict XII., ii.
235.
Ch'un T'sew, or "Spring and Autumn,"
history by Confucius, ii. 25 ; num
ber of states mentioned in, 80 n. ' ;
meaning of title, 475.
Church, erection of Christian, allowed,
ii. 276.
Cilicia practically subdued by Assyria,
312.
Cilician gates, 387.
Cimmerians, raids of, 310, 311 ; Cim
merians, Scyths, and Medes, con
joined movements of, 314.
Cingalese report of Seres inaccurate,
ii. no.
Cinque cento B.C., 288.
"Circle of relatives" in China, ii. 43.
Cisterns for rain water at Carthage,
406.
Citadels, Lycian and Carian, 428.
City of Pyramids (Memphis'), 163 ;
city gods of Sumer and Akkad,
235 ; king and god of the citv,
269 ; " Children of Chaldis, of
the," 303 ; custom of the, 334,
340 ; city taken to witness in deeds,
337 ; storehouses and officers of,
at Cyzicus, 451 ; architecture and
design of ancient Chinese cities,
ii. 62.
Civil capacity of women in Babylonia,
374 ; in China, ii. 350.
Civilization, difference between archaic
and modern, 3 ; common features
of primitive, 7, 14; first "raised
in heat," 401.
Claas Isaaksz, collected customs of
Jaffna Malabars, 559.
Clan chiefs and heads of families, ii.
307, 308.
Class rather than caste divisions in
Egypt, 109.
Classical texts edited under the Hans,
ii. 105 ; imperial versions of, 477,
478.
Claudius, ambassador from Emperor,
in Ceylon, ii. no.
Clerks, earnings of Chinese, ii. 310.
Clergy, list of Egyptian, 63.
Climate of Egypt, 65.
Clock, striking, presented by Ricci,
ii. 266.
Cnidus, inscription from, 429, 430 ;
honours accorded by acclamation
at, 430 ; primogeniture and coun
cil of Sixty at, 435, 473.
Cnossus, as umpire city, 475,
Coal mines in China, ii. 294, 312, 313.
Coalition against Assyria, 316.

Code Napoleon, decay of Basque
custom caused by, 213; Chinese
code, ii. 34 ; on farming imperial
cattle, 373 ; statutory additions
to, how made, 375.
Cof, quasi-political organization in
Berber villages, 536.
Co-Hong, thirteen merchants engaged
in English trade, ii. 336, 337.
Coin melted down to obtain copper,
ii. 160, 162, 163.
Coinage, value of copper, ii. 113 ; va
riations in Chinese, 155-160; ex
cessive charge for, by Chinese
government, 159; common, of
Greek and Lycian federations,
450.
Coiners, trade of, in China, ii. 156,
160.
Coins and weights of ancient China, ii.
57 ; ancient, preserved by forgers,
155-
Colchis, legendary renown of, 460.
Collections of Chinese coins, ii. 155 ;
of Classics made by Han Em
perors, 476.
Colleges of priests do not suffer en
dowments to lapse, 175; colleges
" where they nourished the aged,"
ii. 72 n. ; Imperial and other,
142, 143; colleges founded by Kin
emperor, 174; colleges and libra
ries, 209-211; under the Ming,
254; colleges built by private sub
scription, 378.
Colonization of China effected grad
ually, ii. 11.
Colossal statues of Egyptian kings,
ii. 103.
Comana of Cataonia and Cappadocia,
419 ; of Cappadocia, 439.
Comedians, favour shown to, ii. 165.
Comfort, standard of, in modern China,
ii. 292.
Commercial rent of comparatively late
origin, 141.
Commercial usage, variety and flexi
bility of, in Babylonia, 321, 346;
commercial and family partner
ships distinguishable, 331 ; com
mercial partnerships, division of
profits in, 349 ; commercial hon
esty of Chinese, according to
Semedo, ii. 270 ; to 19th cent
writers, 336, 337 ; commercial
agent, duties of, 368 ; paid by
commission, 369.
Common cultivation of the fields,
system of, ii. 19 ; experimental re
storation, 99 n. ; in Peru, 455,
456.

INDEX.

5n

Common meals perhaps related to
public feasts in Asia Minor, 433 ;
common meals in CEnotria, Crete,
and Lacedaemon, 44S : in Crete,
468, 469 ; in Sparta, 465, 470 ; of
Nabataeans, 512.
Communaute de Mens, provincial
French customs concerning, 205.
Communism of Tyrrhenians, 460 ;
traces of family, in Syro-Roman
law book, 495 ; on island of Pan-
chaea, 514; virtual, of ancient
Arabia, 526.
Commutation of punishments for fines,
ii. 58.
" Companions of the cupboard," 450,
ii. 69, 473-
Compatriot guilds, ii. 338.
Compensation for injuries, ii. 213, 214.
Competition-wallahs gradually intro
duced to civil service, ii. 1 19.
Compound interest not due without
special agreement, 327.
Compradore, general honesty of Chi
nese, ii. 336.
Comradeships at Elbassan, 456.
Concerning dykes, Confucius, ii. 68, 69.
Conclusions, general, ii. 384-95.
Concubinage castes, uncalled-for term
of disparagement, 551.
Conditions of good work threefold,
ii. 61.
Confession, or self-examination, Baby
lonian form of, 245.
" Confirmer of Sons," title of Nebu
chadnezzar I., 343.
Confiscations of officer's wealth, ii.
116 ; of copper hoards intended to
lower the price of land, 161.
Confucian psychology, ii. 86 ; teach
ing, summary of, 88.
Confucius, birthplace of, ii. 14 ; on
the Three Dynasties, 22 ; de
scendant of, claims privilege for
historic records, 26 ; on minis
terial responsibility, the essentials
of government, virtue and wealth,
etc., 31, 32 ; on cornering, 41 ;
on mourning for foster mother,
69 ; his gift to a mourner, 75, 76 ;
on State of Loo, 80, n. 3 ; general
praised by, 82 ; on taking office,
82 ; as an administrator, 83 ; con
temporary criticism of, 83 ; de
spondency and failure of, 84 ; on
rites and reverence, 85 ; on
reciprocity, 89 ; on Taoism. 95 ;
grave of, visited by Han emperor,
195 ; on water and hills, 128 ;
Hioeun-thsang on, 145 ; on serving
spirits and the knowledge of the

dead, 148 ; descendant of, de
manded as hostage, 176; mob
quieted by quotation from, 294.
Confusion between soss and century
possible in Nabonidus' inscription,
255-
Conjugal love, Chow Li on the teach
ing of, ii. 353 n.3
Conjuration, Sumerian formula of, 235,
" Conjuror," literal rendering of word
for witness to deeds, 328.
Conservatism of domestic States, 224 ;
of Hamitic African tribes, 533 ;
of Chinese undergraduates, ii.
380 ; conditions of primitive, 390.
Considerate courtesy of Kang-hi, ii.
278.
Constant widow, in Chinese ode, ii.
66.
Constitutional Chinese doctrine con
cerning bad kings, ii. 18.
Constitutionalism of Sheikh govern
ment, 527 ; of modern Chinese
do., ii. 377.
Contemporary China, European writers
on, ii. 85, 292-4.
" Content with Truth," name of gate
of Rameses, ii. 60.
Contracts saleable in Egypt and Baby
lonia, 168 ; for cultivation of
temple lands, 174 ; forms of com
mercial, in Egypt and Rome, 181 ;
in Nineveh, 182 ; penalties on
breach of, 195 ; simplicity of
Egyptian, 197 ; Setnau's children
made to sign contract renounc
ing their rights, 218 ; contract
tablets of Hammurabi and Rim-
sin, 280 ; contract tablets edited
by Meissner, 284 ; concerning
sales, partnerships, loans and
mortgages, 321 ; in vvhich rent
and interest cancel each other,
323 ; Contract tablets found at
Warka, 327 ; law of Zaleucus on,
448 ; contracts and archives in
Cretan cities, 478 ; contracts
waived as well as debts in China,
ii- 335 ! English definition of con
tract, 460.
Co-operative cooking, ii. 317.
Copper wire used as medium or stan
dard of exchange, 99 ; copper
money, large and small, ii. 58 ; of
Wang-mang, unpopular, 116;
copper mines in Sz'chuen, worked
by Chinese Croesus, 156 ; supply
of, inadequate, 159 j copper uten
sils manufactured by government,
162 ; plentiful after suppression of
monasteries, 164 ; copper cur-

512

INDEX.

rency, 193-6 ; copper plates used
for printing bank notes, 196 ;
Kung-I on copper money, 197 ;
copper money of the Ming, 253,
254 ; modern laws respecting, 369 ;
relative value of copper and sil
ver in Egypt, 445, 447-
Coptic contracts, 209.
Copy-book morality, stock phrases
common to Egypt, Akkad, Car
thage and the Canaries, 409.
Corea, Chinese Protectorate over, dis
puted by Japan, ii. 249.
Cormorants, use for fishing described
by Odoric, ii. 232.
Corn, not habitually exported from
ancient Egypt, 70 ; distributed
free in years of scarcity, 71 ; im
ported by Phoenician government,
398.
Cornish tin cast in moulds like that of
Zimbabwe, 403.
Coroners, instructions to, ii. 213.
Cosmas, the Armenian, ii. 124, 130.
Cosmus, office of, in Crete, 468 ; Cosmi
fined for not carrying out popular
decisions, 474.
Cost of living in China under the Hans,
ii. 113; increased between Han
and Tang, 164; at present day,
315, 316 ; cost of education in
China, 31 1.
Cotton, Akkadian name for, 232 n. ;
cotton mill, earnings in Chinese,
ii. 313.
Counterfeit money, penalty for issuing,
ii. 151.
Courteous Arab, 527.
Courtesy, Chinese rules of, ii. 74, 76 ;
courtesy and insincerity, i. 45 ; ii.
382.
Coutume of Navarre, 213 ; of Paris,
on vifgage, ii. 418.
Couvade in Corsica, 460.
Craftsmen, skill of Chinese, ii. 216.
Cranganore, capital of Cherakings,546.
Credit, easily obtained in China, 195 ;
phrase for, 322 ; development of,
in Babylonia, 350 ; extension of, in
China, ii. 330.
Creditors and officials forbidden to buy
land, 491 ; creditor punished for
selling debtor's family, ii. 370.
Cretan agelse, Albanian parallel to,
456 ; knights, 472 ; ecclesia,
proverbs, 476 ; dress, survivals of
ancient, 482.
Crete and Sparta compared with Car
thage, 391 ; Crete, government
of, described by Ephorus, 467 ;
by Aristotle, 468.

Crocodile, the type of a bad governor,
44.
Croesus and Cyrus ; palace of, con
verted into gerusia, 433.
Crops suited to the soil, ii. 306.
Cultivation of land, tablet concerning,
34o.
Cultivators contract not to appeal to
the gods, 93 ; antichretic mortgage
a boon to small, 184, 186; share
of the produce in Egyptian agree
ments, 188 ; transferred with land
in Assyria, 346 ; share of, in Baby
lonia, 335 ; in Ceylon and Malabar,
570 ; position of poorer cultivators
in China, ii. 304 ; see also Budget
of a peasant.
Cuneiform correspondence between
Egypt and Mesopotamia, 120,
292 ; tablets found near Tyana,
420 ; cuneiforms, Cypriote and
Phoenician characters derived
from, 98 ; see also tablets, contract
tablets and inscriptions.
Currency of Tsih-moh city, ii. 58 ;
changes made in, by Wang-Mang,
115 ; troubles connected with the,
'21, 195,253-
Curse on the careless feaster, 236.
Custom duties transferred from local
to central revenue, ii. 369 ; custom
the chief of the Agamas, 464.
"Custom of her people," amount of
debt according to, 354.
Customary division of produce in
Malabar, 569 ; customary price
and quality of goods generally
known in China, ii. 365.
Cvelne Msecnatial = Cilnius Maecenas,
427.
Cyaxares, king of Media, attacks
Nineveh, 316.
Cyclopean architecture, traditional
home of, 428.
Cylinders, earliest Babylonian, 261.
Cyme, proverbial stupidity of men of,
462.
Cynocephali, found in tomb of King
Khafra (Chephren), 145.
Cypriote syllabary, 98, 387 ; charac
ters, 403.
Cyprus, said to be invaded by Sargon,
312 ; chief cities of, 403.
Cyrus conquers Sardis, 318.
Cyzicus, 450 ; compared to Massalia
and Rhodes, 452.
Damages paid by divorcing husband,
217 ; for persona] injuries at
Rhodes, 444 ; for injuries by ani-

INDEX.

5'3

mals, Gortyn code on, 481 ; for
breach of betrothal contract, 536.
Damascening iron, art of, known in
Babylonia, 250.
Damik-marduk, dynasty of, 297.
Dangerous animals, rules respecting,
ii- 373-
Darius, Egyptian priesthood con
ciliated by, 179 ; no deeds relat
ing to sales of land in Egypt be
fore, 1S6; Darius I., marriage
contract temp., 210; Darius
Codomamanus, Egyptian deed
showing heiress daughters temp.,
214 ; Darius, Babylonian contract
tablets of his reign, 353, 354.
Dark ages of Chinese history, ii.
126.
Daughter of Kao-tsou-tang buried with
military honours, ii. 132 ; of Tai-
tsou-sung, 169.
Daughters' descendants, tomb re
served to, 433 ; rights of, reserved
in Posidonius' endowment, 434 ;
and in that of Epikteta, 435.
Daughters left heirs among Cantabri
and Basques, 213, 460 ; of Ma'in
named in inscriptions, ii. 348 ;
marriage portions of, ii. 348.
Dead, sale of the, in Egypt, 167, 168.
Death, Egyptian phrase for, " to rejoin
my mother," 220.
Deba on coast of Arabia show hospi
tality to Dorians, 516.
Debating Hall in Canton, ii. 380.
Debt, fictitious acknowledgments of,
by Egyptian husbands, 209, 220.
Debtor and creditor, relations of, in
Egypt, 193-6 ; in Egypt and
Babylonia, 322.
Debtors, penalties on defaulting, ii.
369-
Debts assignable in Babylonia, 321 ;
made to extinguish each other,
351 ; readily forgiven in China,
"¦ 335, 34°, 341 ; paid by sons,
^ 351-
Deccan=south or "right hand," 266.
Decline of Egyptian independence,
ii. 409.
Decorum of ancient Rhodes, 444.
Decurions in Peru, ii. 453.
Dedication of wealth in Egypt, 161.
Deed of gift to a daughter, 368 ; of
mutual renunciation, 364, 365 ;
deeds and indentures, Chow Li
on, ii. 60 ; see also contracts.
Degrees granted for money, ii. 255.
De la Marre's translation of Kien-
lung's history of the Ming, ii. 238.
Delos a centre of Oriental trade, 508.
vol 11. — p.c.

Delphic oracle, Athenian problem
submitted to, 438.
De Mailla, History of, ii. 274 ; con
tinuation of, 283 n.
Demeter and Persephone, mysteries
of, 420 ; Demeter and Kore, ob
jects of worship in all Cnidian
inscriptions, 430.
Democratic temper of East African
tribes, 531-3 ; of Chinese society,
ii. 294.
Demogerontiaof modern Cretans, 482.
Demosthenes' father lends on security
of a shop, 327.
Demotic chronicle, 60 ; writing, in
troduction of, 191, 192 ; marriage
contracts, 201.
Denga dwarf, from the land of Pun,
497-
De Rougd on origin of Egyptian
civilization, 20.
Descent counted through the mother,
407; traces of, in Arabia, 521;
counted by the Kanuri, 538.
Deserts of Central Asia and the
Sahara, ii. 3.
"Despising" a wife, penalties on, in
Egypt, 217.
Dgema'a, Kabyle village council, 534.
Dhuspas = Tosp, 302.
Diminutive termination inna, 418.
Diodorus on Egyptian monarchy, 47,
48 ; on Egyptian tribunals, 56 ; on
judicial procedure in Egypt,
59 ; on cost of living in Egypt,
72 ; on skill of Egyptian herds
men, 79 ; on slavery, in Egypt, 90 ;
on Egyptian gold mines, 96 ; on
Egyptian wives, 210.
Diorite threshold dedicated to goddess,
262.
Dioscorides=Sokotra, 516.
Diplomacy, need for skilled, in China,
ii. 382.
Director of the multitudes, ii. 23 n. ;
one of his duties, 353 n.
Diseased mendicancy rare in China,
ii. 141.
Disintegration of families by Malabar
system of inheritance, 550.
Dismemberment of Chinese empire,
Ma-twan-lin on, ii. 179, 180.
Disorder, four sources of, ii. 105.
Dispensaries, free under the Mongols,
ii. 224.
Distribution of the waters in Egypt,
79.
Divided ownershipdistrusted in China,
ii- 3^3-
Division of property amongst children,
215 ; on divorce at Gortyn, 477 ;
L L

514

INDEX.

by Syro-Roman code, 492, 493 ; of
earnings between Illavatti couple's
heirs, 554 ; of family property in,
China, laws concerning, ii. 348,
35°.
Divisions of the day, ii. 436.
Divorce, deed of, 366, 367 ; Georgian
penalty on, 458 ; Gortyn code on,
477 ; freedom of, by women in
Arabia, 522, 523 ; formula of, in
Arabia, 524 ; ancient freedom of,
in China, 537 ; Towarek liberty
of, 539 ; lawful causes of, in China,
ii. 353 ; customs respecting, in
Malabar, 467, 470.
" Doctor of the four willows," ii. 128.
" Doctor of the gate," 4th Dyn.
judicial title, 59.
Dodona, priestesses of, 423.
Dogs in ancient monarchy and
nth Dyn. tombs, 149.
Domain of restraint, wild, imperial,
etc., in ancient China, ii. 21.
Domesday Book, mortgages in, ii. 418.
Domestic relations, historic variations
in, 10.
Domestic slavery mild in Egypt, 91.
Domestic triad in primitive Meso
potamia, 238.
Domestic virtues described in Egyp
tian inscriptions, 198.
Dominican jealousy of Jesuits, ii. 276.
Doors, etc., tenant's fixtures in ancient
Babylonia, 341.
Dorians, metropolis of, 465.
Dowries given " to " or " with "
daughters, 373, 374 ; limited at
Massalia, 453 ; Syro-Roman code
on, 491 ; Thesawaleme on, 559,
560 ; pass to husband's family in
China, ii. 350 ; Welsh mortgages
allowed to pay, ii. 418, 419.
Drainage, understood in Sumer and
Akkad, 233 ; necessary in Egypt,
ii. 413.
Dravidian group of languages, 545 ;
population of Dravidian village
described, 565, 566 ; Dravidian
(like Chinese) lottery, called kuri,
568.
Dravidians called Kshatriyas, 109 ;
affinities of Dravidians, ii. 440.
Dress, Jesuits adopt literary instead
of Buddhist, ii. 267.
Drowning or ducking of divorcing
spouse, 362.
Drum struck by disciple of Choo-hi,
ii. 208 ; by Mr. Pumpelly, 376 n. ;
appeal to the, 376.
Dryness of desert air, sanitary effect
of, 496.

Duck-shaped weight of Dungi, 272.
DuffGordon, Lady, on carrying stones,
101 ; on animal worship, 149 ; on
Bedaween women, 200.
Duke of Chow, 24, ii. 22, 46, etc.
D'unama ben Selma'a, king of Bornu,
538.
Dungi, copious inscriptions of, 267 ;
son of Ur-bau, 272.
Dunshagana, son of Ningirsu, 240.
Dunziddu, foster-father of Gudea, 271.
Duodecimal divisions, 421.
Dur-Kurigalzu, fortress and wall to
protect Kardunias, 288.
Dust storms and wind streams, ii. 6.
Dutch embassy to Peking, ii. 272, 273.
Duty of a virtuous Egyptian, 51.
" Dwelling-place of Ea," a translation
of name Eridu, 252.
Dyers' union, ii. 320.
Dyke of Mareb, 506, 507.
Dynasties, Egyptian, App. A., ii.
400-9 ; capitals of various, 407 ;
Babylonian, 256 n., 258; App. D.,
ii. 424-32 ; Chinese, App. L., ii.
495-
E, king of Chow, ii. 24.
Ea, mother, daughter and son of, 238 ;
the water culture-god of Baby
lonia, 497.
Eana, temple of Erech, 261.
Eanna, high priest described as one
who goes in to, 262.
Eanna-du, patesi of Lagash, 262, 263.
Earnest money and fines for breach
of contract, 443 ; in laws of Cha-
rondas, 449 ; when forfeited, by
Syro-Roman code, 489.
Earnings and gifts to unmarried sons,
Thesawaleme on, 559.
Earthenware coffins, temp. Gudea, 243.
Earthquake of Rhodes, gifts to the
island after, 443.
Eastern mountains, population of,
united against Senacherib, 312 ;
Eastern and Western custom con
trasted in Syro-Roman code, 492 ;
Eastern Han restored after Wang-
mang's death, ii. n6n. ; Eastern
Turkestan, Chinese rule in, 287.
Eater of rations, Egyptian term for
subject, 68.
Ebers papyrus, 98.
Ebisu or Ibishun, one contract tablet
dated in reign of, 284.
Ecrit pour argent, 1 82.
Edict of agriculture, 135, 138, 139 ;
Chinese edict granting religious
toleration, ii. 276; concerning
grasshoppers, 375.

INDEX.

3*5

Edicts for and against Wang-ngan-
shi and his opponents, ii. 207,208.
Edom, kings in the land of, 500.
Edrisi on China, ii. 215.
'¦ Education, Record on the subject
of," in the Li Ki, ii. 118.
Egypt, aland of difficult access, iS ;
Egypt and Mesopotamia, corre
spondence between, 1 20 ; Egypt
and Assyria rivals in Palestine,
310; Egypt and Yemen, inter
course between, 501.
Egyptian craving for a kind of im
mortality, 154 ; deeds and con
tracts, unilateral in form, 81 ;
kings refuse their daughters to
foreign kings, 294 ; law of in
heritance, 125 ; law, general
character of, 223 ; marriage
contracts really marriage settle
ments, Malabar parallel to, 553,
ii. 461 ; moralists on offend
ing wife, i. 477 ; priesthood, 316 ;
dates and dynasties, ii. 399-405 ;
ritual or Book of the Dead, date
of extant copies of, i. 122 ; royal
tens, 394 ; temperament, 141, 162.
Egyptians, honesty of modern, 45 1 .
Eight and ten years' tenancy secured by
mortgage, 331.
Eight hours' day in Chinese lead mine,
ii. 313.
Eighteen provinces of modern China,
ii. 14.
Eighteenth Dyn. kings associate sons
and daughters, 120; 18th and
19th Egyptian Dyns. contem
porary with Kassite do., 291.
Eimeri, 13th Dyn., Chief of Great
House of the Six, 61.
Ekura, temple of Nipur, 261.
Elam and Media merged in Persia,
318 ; tribes of Elam, 232 ; tombs of
the kings of, 233 ; campaign of
Nebuchadnezzar against king of,
342 ; pride of, 353 n.
Elamite invasion of Erech, 258, 259;
Elamite and Hittite profiles alike,
268 ; Elamite kings in land of
Mutbal, 279 ; Elamites, perhaps
expelled by kings of Larsa, 278 ;
Elamites and Kassites, 285.
Elder brother or eldest son constituted
in deeds of adoption, 370 ; "elder
brother of the former family " in
story of a foundling, 378.
Elders of a tribe conjoined with women
in Minasan inscription, 509.
Eldest child, partnership of, in family
property, 117; heirship of Basque,
461.

Eldest daughter acts as head of family,
214 ; sacrifices if there is no-son,
240 ; name of, takes precedence,
406.
Eldest son associated with father to
secure his title, no; "eldest son,"
title of honour in ancient Egyptian
monuments, 121, 123 ; Egyptian
character for, 122 ; a proper name
of Thoth, 122 ; Chinese eldest son
mourns three years for his eldest
son, ii. 70.
Electors, Bornu king appointed by
three, 538.
Elephantine and Syene = " ivory" and
"trade" stations, 95.
Eleuthernae, treaties with, 474.
Eleuths, insubordination of, ii. 278,
279 ; conquest of, 286, 287.
E Li or " Ceremonial Usages," ii. 475.
Elish-ku-lim-ma-sin, letter from, in
Tell-el-Amarna collection, 292.
Elissa, her council often Punic princes,
393-
Embalmment of the dead, 165 ; pur
chase of materials for, 168.
" Embalmer,'' originally a title of dis
tinction, 153.
Embassy, reception of Papal, ii. 235 ;
Dutch, 273 ; English, 379.
Emerald pillar in Tyrian temple, ii.
440.
Emersons numerous in China, ii. 85.
Erne-sal, read "women's language,"
264.
Empress, school for royal children
founded by Han, ii. 120 ; Empress
Wu-heou, examinations for women
introduced by, 133 ; Empress re
gent, 169 ; Empress appoints heir
to Wu-tsong-Ming, 246.
Enamelled bricks, colours of, 250.
En-anna-du, patesis of Lagash, 263.
En-anna-tumma, patesi, 246.
Enchanters, Oman called land of, 528.
Encyclopaedia of Yung-lo, ii. 239.
Endowments, purpose of the earliest,
in Egypt, 144 ; necessary to per
petuate commemorative worship,
155 ; of tombs precedes that of
temples, 156 ; examples of private,
in Egypt, 156 ; earliest mention
of temple, 169; endowment of
wife with husband's property, 206;
Chinese family endowments, ii.
378.
Engineers, English, in Egypt, 11. 413,
4H-
Engraver will not put his name to in
scription defaming Ssema-kwang,
ii. 206.

5*6

INDEX.

Enki, lord of earth, a name of Ea, 240.
En Nedin, authority for Sabaean mar
riage law, 523.
Entena, patesi of Lagash, 263.
Enzag, name of Nebo, found at
Bahrein, 238.
Enzu or Sin, the moon god, 239.
Ephesus, inscription from, respecting
mortgages, 437.
Ephesus, where parents " owe dowries
to their daughters," 560.
Ephors, 472, 473.
Ephorus on government of Crete, 467.
Epiballontes, " belongings " in Gortyn
code, 477.
Epidemics, immunity from, in China,
ii. 372.
Epigram against miser, ii. 66.
Epitropos, son may be appointed as,
4S9.
Eponymous Cosmus, 468.
Eponyms, list of Assyrian, 297.
Equator, divisions of, ii. 436.
Equinoxes observed in Malabar, 564.
Eratosthenes on nations of Arabia
Felix, 509.
Erech, 230 ; a city of Akkad, 264 ; a
most ancient favourite place of
burial, 266.
Eridu on or near the sea when
founded, 229 ; ancient names of,
252 ; a city of Sumer, 264.
Erimenas, king of Armenia, makes
peace with Assyria, 302.
Erman, Dr., on funeral endowments,
157.
Erpa or ropa, Egyptian title implying
hereditary rank or birth, 41 ; Erpa
or ropa of the gods, 117.
Ersu or Arisu, Syrian usurper, 177.
Eryx, wall of, 405.
Esagilla, great temple of Babylon, 261.
Esarhaddon,inscriptions and borrowed
monuments of, 249 ; genealogy of,
306 ; Egyptian campaigns of,
312 ; restores Babylon and repels
Cimmerians, 313.
Esclau = Basque cadet, 461.
Eskimo half-breeds, Jewish features of,
529.
Esprit de corps of Chinese eunuchs,
ii. 137.
Essays not now set in political ques
tions of the day, ii. 380.
" Established wife," rights of, in Egypt,
1 1 5, 204 ; synonyms for, in China,
ii. 67.
Estates of early Egyptian nobles, 67.
Etelkasin and his wife renounce a son,
33°, 3°4-
Ethnic movement, two lines of, 383.

Ethnological difficulties and problems,
3°-3-
Etiquette, Chinese, for reception of
foreigners dates from Chow Li, ii.
273-
Etruscan federation, 424 ; origin
of Roman tribes, 424 ; text on
mummy wrap, 425 ; tombs and
commerce, 426 ; Etruscans and
Lydians confounded, 425.
Euergetes II., tenants temp., made
to " contract out " of right of
asylum, 93.
Euiuk, remains of, 387.
Eunuch, confiscated wealth of, ii. 246.
Eunuchs, influence of, ii. 115; their
power revived, 136, 137 ; fall of
their party, 138.
Euphrates and canal system of Meso
potamia, 230.
European fundholder, origin of, ii. 329.
Evaporation exceeding rainfall, ii. 4.
Examinations and colleges in ancient
China, ii. 71 ; do. and schools
under the Han, 118-20; ex
aminations and office, 144 ; held
south of the Kiang for northern
provinces, 202 ; under posterior
Dyns. and Sung, 209, 210 ; under
the Mongols, 229 ; for degrees,
254, 255 ; entry to, implies regis
tration, 361 ; importance and
character of, 380.
Exchange of land between brothers,
337-
Exchange of use (land for money, etc.)
in Babylonia, 183, 331.
Exempt land, sc. from taxation, in
Egypt, 139-
Exogamy associated with " sister's
son's inheritance," 554; of Chi
nese, ii. 141, 494.
Export trade condemned and importa
tion of furs approved, 324.
Exportation of grain forbidden, ii.
163; of rice, 280; in time of
scarcity, 361.
" Eye, there is no," 345.

" Face of the land sprouts," loan to be
repaid when, 333.
Fa-hien, travels of, 44, 124.
Fair Semites in Egyptian monuments,
277.
Falcon breeds in N. Asia, and winters
in E. Africa, 519.
Fall of Nineveh, 314.
Family affection, strength of, in
Egypt, 199; relationships of
Mesopotamian gods, 238 ; law

INDEX.

5>7

tablet, 361 ; renderings of, by
Bertin, Haupt, Meissner, and Op
pert, 362 ; alternative version,
365, 366 ; family property held
jointly by tarwad or tavali, 552 ;
archaic constitution of Chinese
family, ii. 21 ; community, work
ing of family, 300-3 ; councils,
power of family, 308, 309 ; suits
relating to family property, 352 ;
family customs and endowments,
362, 3/S.
Famine, rare in ancient Egypt, 69 ;
in Upper Egypt, 1878, 75.
Fan-bearer, bakshish to, 89.
Farm servants, wages of, in China, ii.
310.
Farming out of cattle, 85 ; under Per
sians and Ptolemies, 86 ; in Egypt,
Ireland, and Tatary, 135 ; in
ancient and modern China, ii. 52,
373-
'• Fatal sentence " in the mouth of a
prince, ii. 33.
Father and mother, Egyptian and
Babylonian view of, 198.
Father holds property for his children,
212 ; cedes his property to a
daughter on condition of main
tenance, 375.
Father-in-law of So-and-so, party to a
deed described as, 361.
"Father's debt, son pays," 352, ii.
351-
Feast of Hoeing, 152 ; temple feasts,
432 ; common feasts in Peru, ii.
456.
Feaster, curse on the careless, 236.
Federal union of Lycian cities, 429.
Fees paid to Malabar Rajah, 564.
Feleji, irrigation channels in Arabia,
527-
Fellahin as a class probably settled on
" remaining" land, 141.
" Fellow villagers," judgment to be re
ceived, ii. 43.
Female descent or Mutter recht, m,
113, 429, 513 ; female agnates and
cognates distinguished in Syro-
Roman code, 494 ; kinship,
copious vocabulary of female, in
China, ii. 68.
Femmes savantes, Pan-hoei-pan on,
ii. 118.
Feng shwuy, ii. 133.
Feudalism in Egypt under the 6th
and 12th Dynasties, 40; in China
under the later Chow emperors,
ib. ; feudal rights mortgaged in
Malabar leases, 572, 574 ; feudal
princes, Mencius' complaint of, ii.

24 ; etiquette, examples of feudal
ism, Si, 82 ; feudalism, Chinese
age of, 83 ; creation of feudal
princes, policy of, 102 ; compelled
to divide their lands, 105 ; feudal
ism in S. China, 127; attempted
revival of, under the Tang, 151.
Fever demon of Mesopotamia, 236.
Feysul, prince of Riad, 502, 503.
" Field of a fourth," fifth, tenth, etc.,
336.
Fields measured by seed, 341, 570.
Fifth Babylonian Dyn., 297.
Fifth Dyn., unoccupied tombs already
scarce under, 163 ; ideal of do
mestic virtues in inscriptions of,
198.
Fifty, temples of the number, 262, 263,
268, 272.
Fijian chiefs and working parties, 68.
Filial children, duties of, ii. 73, 74.
Filiation, tablets of, 378.
Finance ministers of Kubla, ii. 225,
227.
Fines for insanitary house property,
341 ; on breach of contract to be
paid to a temple, 346 ; paid by
divorcing husband, 363 ; on the
violation of tombs, 433, 434 ; on re
newal of lease to janmi, 573, 574 ;
extension of system of fines by
Yung-lo, ii. 242.
" Fines" of Breton Laws, ii. 490.
Finger posts, friendly notices on, in
Asia Minor, 464.
Finnic tribes, earliest metal workers in
N. Europe, 401.
Finno-Ugric affinities of Etruscan,
426.
Fire god, Ishum, 285.
Fire, ideogram for, 236 ; rules respect
ing, in ancient China, ii. 47, 48 ;
houseless poor sheltered by rela
tives after, 379 ; local governor
dismissed if fires numerous, 375.
Fire-proof towers for storing valuables,
ii. 222, 223.
" First-born Bel," a title of Nebo, 238.
First-fruits, dedication of, 152.
First year of marriage, proprietary
partnership begins after, 206.
Fishermen's union, ii. 320.
Five Dyns., Chow drums lost during
the, ii. 27.
Five Dyns. in China and Egypt, ii.
406.
Five legs, animals represented with,
250.
Five, tribunals of, 472.
Flax factory in Egypt, 106.
Flint axes from Syria, 98.

•5*8

INDEX.

" Floating" and flying coins, ii. 158.
Flocks and herds given to the temples
. by Gudea, 247.
Flowers used in Egypt, 162.
Fo = Buddha, worship of, introduced to
China, ii. 109, 1 16.
Fong and Chan sacrifices, ii. 36, 106 ;
imperial gifts after, 107.
Foo-chow, great port of Fokien, ii.
218.
Food, cheap and abundant in ancient
Egypt, 66, 73 ; the antidote to the
mortal poison of hunger, ii. 129 ;
food and fodder plants of Western
Asia, i. 231.
Foot, length of Babylonian and Egyp
tian, ii. 433 ; of Roman, 434.
Foot soldier, hardships of, painted by
Egyptian scribes, 138.
Forced labour and subsistence wages,
67, 68, 88.
Foreign commerce in ancient Egypt,
94; foreign princesses carriedoff to
Egyptian harems, 294; foreign
policy of the Hans, ii. no ; trade
at Canton, ib. ; alliances of China
under the Tang, 139 ; trade, im
perial monopoly ot foreign, 221,
225 ; trade, regulations of foreign,
236 ; foreign commerce under the
Ming, 260.
Foreigner, the, in Egypt, ii. 415.
Forest of Tablets, ii. 477.
Forestalling forbidden, ii. 361.
Formula of mutual renunciation of
relationship, 362.
Fortification in Peru, ii. 454.
Fortress, plan of, on Gudea's statue,
268.
Fostering in China, ii. 69.
Fou-hi, mythical emperor of China, ii.
17, 144.
Foundation of Massalia, story of, 462.
Foundations, proverbs respecting, 248 ;
foundations of Iulbar in Agani,
sought by Kurigalzu, 288 ; of
houses apt to get out of order,
34t
Foundling, story of, 378.
Foundry, bonus on production in
Chinese, ii. 312.
Four Mountains, title of Chinese
officer, ii. 21 ; Four Philosophers,
books of the, ii. 475.
Four Regions, king of, 32 ; idea of, in
Egypt, 39 ; title of, 273 ; " Four
quarters of the world," a name for
Peru, ii. 452.
Four seas, within the, Chinese expres
sion, ii. 12, 21.
Fourth and Fifth Dyn. tombs, 50.

Fourth Babylonian Dynasty of Pasi,
295.
Fou-y, anti-Buddhist memorial of, ii.
'45, J46.
Fractional ownership due to family
partitions, 216.
Fractions of a house owned, 342 ;
fractions of 60 give names to
numbers, ii. 435.
Franciscan missions to China, ii. 231,
232, 234, 235-
Fraudulent promoter unknown in
China, ii. 334.
Free libraries, ii. 380.
Freedom of contract, Locrian view of,
452 ; freedom of the press, Chinese
counterpart to, ii. 35 ; of speech
and literature in ancient China, 79 ;
free trade in coin, 155, 158, 162;
freedom of contract in regard to
loan and lease, ii. 422.
French missionaries, why unpopular,
ii- 377, 378.
"Friend" or intimate of the king, a
title in Egypt, 50.
Friendship, Chinese formula for swear
ing, ii. 295.
" From mouth to money," 338.
Frontage, Chinese houses described
by size of their, ii. 381.
Frontier garrisons, provisioning of,
ii. 245.
Frontiers of Babylon and Assyria,
289.
Fu-lang, horses sent from, ii. 235.
Funeral sacrifices, 158; monuments,
changes in the character of Egyp
tian, 170 ; inscription on the
darkness of death, 199.

Gal-alim, son of god Ningirsu, 239,
240.
Galatians, twelve tetrarchies of, 422.
Galeotto Perera, ii. 262.
Game-preserving, Mencius on, ii. 40 ;
not known in modern China, 374.
Gamil or Ur-nindar, 273.
Gamil-sin, contract tablets of, 259.
Ganoul, daughter of Ur-bau, 262.
Gaps in Babylonian dynastic table,
297.
Garden and fields distinguished, 341 ;
modern Chinese gardens, ii. 381.
Gasper da Cruz, description of China
and the Chinese, ii. 263, 264.
Gate, justice done in the temple, 268.
Gates named by Rameses II., and
Rammannirari, 60, 290.
Gatumdug, goddess mother of Lagash,
239-

INDEX.

5*9

Gaulos, ancient temple of, called
Giganteja, 405.
Gaza, terminus of Arabian trade, 500,
508.
Gebanites or Gabaan, 510.
Geilfine family, ii. 492, 493.
Genealogies, sister mentioned in re
mote generation of, m ; not
valued in Egypt, 12S ; mother
mentioned in Etruscan, 427.
" General examination of records and
scholars," ii. 479.
Genghis khan and the Kin, ii. 175.
Geographical bi-lingual, 361.
Geographical "description of provinces
and cities," ii. 27.
Geology of Central Asia, ii. 3.
Georgian laws, 45 S.
Gerbillon, Father, acts as interpreter
with Russia, ii. 275.
Ghanna = fish, 261.
Ghoumdan, fort of Sana, 505.
Gifts to the gods common after 12th
Dyn. inscriptions, 155; of oil,
Rhodian inscription concerning,
441 ; to wives and daughters,
limited by Gortyn code, 478, 479 ;
from mother to son do. do., 481 ;
to children, Syro-Roman code on,
488 ; to wives, Syro-Roman code
on, 489.
Gilgames, name Izdubar or Gisdubar
now read, 262 ; group of Gilgames
and Heabani, 402.
Gin-dung-nadda-addu, wife of Gudea,
inscription to, 271.
Gin-tsong, Sung emperor, ii. 169;
urged to appoint an heir, 180.
"Giver of names," 342, 379.
Giving cloth, significance of Malabar
marriage rite, 557.
Glass making, a Phoenician industry,
403-
Go-between, essential in land transfers,
ii- 359-
" Goddesses and gods, women and
men," 271.
Goes, Benedict, crosses Central Asia,
ii. 269.
Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, parallel to,
in Chinese classics, ii. 32.
Gold mines of Nubia, 95, 96 ; gold sent
from Egypt to Babylonia, 292,
294 ; gold and silver in circulation
in China, ii. 163 ; price of, in S.W.
China, 218; proportionate value
of gold and silver under the Ming,
253.
Gordian, law of Emperor, 209.
Gortyn code on offending husband,
366 ; Gortyn code, 467, 476-85.

Gortyn, treaties between, and Cnossus
and Lappa, 475.
Government officials and pawn-shops,,
ii. 331.
Grain, cultivation of, how suggested,
230 ; grain measured and money
weighed, 339; "grain purchase
by agreement," abuses connected
with, ii. 152 ; grain-storage, sys
tem of, revived, 284, 285.
Granaries, Chow Li on, ii. 33 ; Li Ki
on3 35s 3°; public, under the Mon
gols, 223, 224 ; private charitable,
361 n. ; Peruvian, called pirn a,
455. 456.
Grand Canal, ii. 10, 17, 224, 225, 236.
Grandchildren, Egyptian interest in
posterity stops with, 125.
Grand-daughter, eldest, mentioned in
12th Dyn. funeral inscription, 214.
Grand lama does homage at Peking,
ii. 274.
Grasshoppers, confidential Chinese
edict respecting, ii. 375.
Gratitude of Chinese merchants, ii.
335-
Graver, "house of the," 261 ; "he who
bears the," 262.
Graves, Egypt a land of, 66.
" Great winds have a path," 237, ii. 6 ;
" Great Plan," the, ii. 30 ; " Great
College," 143 ; Great wall of
China, line followed by, ii. 17,
100, 101, 105, 106, 245.
Greater Leptis, Sidonian customs of,
407.
Greek cities in Arabia, 516, 517;
ships from Egypt trade with
Malabar, 546 ; leases in form of
mortgages, 572, 573 ; coins, ii.
448-51.
Green mount planted by Kubla, 11.
233- , . ..
Grosier, Abbd, on Wang-ngan-shi, 11.
180.
Guanche vocabulary for relationships,
542 ; origin and remains of
ancient population, 542-4.
Guardian appointed by Egyptian
father's will, 204.
Guardianship of orphans by laws of
Charondas, 449 ; of heiresses by
Gortyn code, 481.
Gudea, supposed to have imported
stones from Sinaitic peninsula,
21 ; statues of, 25, 28 ; conquests
of, in Elam, 233 ; inscriptions of,
242-7, 262 ; portrait statues of,
267 ; his rule, style and fortress
plan, 268 ; comparative date of
Sargon and Gudea, 267 ; products

520

INDEX.

brought by his ships, 269 ; his
account of his parentage, 271.
Guggu, king of Luddu (Gyges, king of
Lydia), 310.
Gugua makes over her property con
ditionally, 374.
Guild of merchants and ship-owners,
395, 398, 508.
Guilds, Chinese traders', ii. 339.
Gulkisar, endowment by, 343.
Gursar, grandfather of a king of
Lagash, 263.
Guti, peoples "east" of Babylonia =
Goyim, 265, 286 ; light-coloured
slaves from, 340.
Gyges, Egyptian alliances of, 313 ;
AssurbanipaPs account of, 310.
Gynascocracy of Nairs and Towareks,
457-

Ha, the Egyptian headman, 41.
Habigal, dynasty of, 306.
Hadee'yal, Arab war maiden called,
529.
Hadendowa tribes of East Africa, 531.
Hadramaut, government of, 528.
Hagiar kini, monolithic doorway at,
405.
Hahema, chief of Turfan, ii. 245.
Halicarnassus, priesthood of Artemis
sold at, 435 ; treaty concerning
lands and houses between Hali
carnassus and Lygdamis, 436 ;
decree of, 490.
" Hall of Two Truths," 73.
Halys, battle of, 317 ; bridge across
the, 414.
Ham, derivation of the name, 26.
Haman, name of, connected with
Elamite Chumba-ba, 274.
Hamdani, 496, 505.
Hami, disputed protectorate over, ii.
265, 266.
Hamitic stocks, branches of so-called,
28 ; African stocks akin to Egyp
tian may be called, 384 ; common
points of Hamitic and Alarodian
civilization, 424.
Hamlet = five neighbourhoods, ii. 43.
Hammamat, quarries of, 95, 96.
Hammurabi and Burnaburias, dated
by Nabonidus, 254 ; Hammurabi,
otherwise Chammuragash, 258,
259 ; inscription of, naming Rim-
sin, 280; grandfather of, 282 ; in
scriptions of, 282, 283 ; contract
tablets of his age, 321.
Han Dynasty, history of first, quoted,
ii. 97 ; founder of, 104 ; distress in
early days of, 108 ; fall of, 121.

Handfasting, 205.
Hang-chow = Khan-fu, Quinsay, or
Kingsse, ii. 215, 220.
Han-ki, " a man useful to others," 11.
148.
Hanlin college founded, ii. 143 ; por
tion of members of, 377.
Han-ming-ti, ii. 116.
Hannirabbat, king of, corresponds
with Amenhotep III., 292.
Han-wen-kung, see Han-yu, the Prince
of Literature.
Hanwen-ti (emperor Wen of the Han
Dynasty), secret supplicator sup
pressed by, ii. 37 ; freedom of
speech allowed by, 118 ; see Wen-
ti.
Han-wu-ti, emperor Wu of Han
Dynasty, ii. 139 ; coinage of, 155,
156.
Han-yu, poem on drums of Chow by,
ii. 27 ; on Mencius and Mih, 89,
91 ; on examinations, 143 ; anti-
Buddhist memorial of, 147, 148 ;
quoted against reception of Ricci's
offerings, 266 ; translated by
Kang-hi, 276.
Haqou ahouit, title of Amten, 49.
Hai-am Bilkis at Mareb, 506 ; inscrip
tion from, 507.
Haran, men of, protected by Sargon,
308 ; = Kharran, "the road," 389.
" Hard and white," treatises on the, ii.
88.
Haritat, King, 512.
Harrani, road, stands for business,
trade, 238.
Harris papyrus, gifts to the gods enu
merated in, 176, 177.
Hartitief, Prince, author of dark say
ings, 122.
Harvest, time of, in Egypt, 81 ; land
changes hands after, in Babylonia,
341-
Hasmar, son and palace of, 297.
Hathor, patron goddess of five nomes,
150 ; princesses named as priest
ess of, 170.
Hayton, Armenian prince, on Cathay
ans, ii. 216.
Hazael besieged in Damascus, 299.
He, duke of Loo, sacrifice against
drought proposed by, ii. 51.
Heaou, Duke of T'sin, ii. 97.
Heaou, King or Classic of filial piety,
ii. 476.
Heaou or " after " Tsin, ii. 97 ; Heaou
or after Tang, Leang, 165 ; after
Han, after Chow, 166.
" Heaven " and the " Lord of heaven "
the same, ii. 276, 282.

INDEX.

521

"Heaven-sent " instincts of the people,
ii. 92.
Hebrew prophets on political situation,
315-
Heen, King, contemporary of Mencius,
ii. 28.
Heeren on origin of Semitic race,
Heiresses, why numerous at Sparta,
483 ; laws common to Chalcidians
and Rhaegianson, 450; heiresses,
465 ; Gortyn code on, 4S0, 489.
Heirship as well as sonship ascribed
to the gods, 123.
Hekate, temple of, at Lagina, 431.
Hekatomnos Dynasty, names of, in
use, 429.
Heliopolis, chief priesthood of, 171.
Helots, 465, 4S5.
Heqab, Prince, " ruler of his father's
heritage," 124 ; heir son, 489.
Her sesteta, title borne in 6th and 18th
Dynasties, 61.
Heracleidae, date of, 416.
Herakles, road called of, 402 ; archaic
image of, imitated from Gilgames
group, 402.
Hereditary princes, their rights re
spected by Egyptian kings, 132 ;
plots pledged rather than sold
in Babylonia, 324 ; property,
Thesawaleme on, 559 ; offices
in Chow Li, ii. 55 ; governorships,
attempts to restore, 134, 138;
land not saleable for debt, 340.
Heretical sects,Taoism and Buddhism,
ii. 145.
Hermias, suit concerning title of land
by, 189.
Hermopolis, priest of Thoth at, 172.
Herodius of Alexandria, letter on
Edict of Agriculture, 135.
Herodotus on slaves' right of asylum,
92; on Egyptian priests, 55;
chronological confusion of infor
mants of, 132 ; on Egyptian
animal pets, 149 ; on duty of
Egyptian daughters, 219 ; apt be
ginning of his record, 311.
Hezekiah, his allies against Assyria,
312.
Hia, Little Calendar of, tr. by Biot, ii.
9; dynasty of, founded by Yu, 18;
house-building favourite industry
of the, 61.
"Hidden sheep," sacrifice to, ii. 37.
Hien-fung, recent Tsing emperor, ii.
289.
Hien-tsong, Tang emperor, ii. 136;
147 ; treasury bonds issued by,
163.

Hien-tsong-ming, lands taken from the
people under, ii. 244.
Hierapytna, treaties with, 474, 475.
Hierarchy, Manual of Egyptian, tr. by
Maspero, 61.
Hieroglyph for priest, 157.
Hierro, village enclosures in, 542.
" High place," frequented by spirits in
ancient China, ii. 37.
High priest of Thebes, Heliopolis and
Memphis, 63 ; of Apuat and no-
march of Siout, 158 ; of Ptah at
Memphis, 164; of Amon at Thebes,
of Osiris at Abydos, ib. ; of
Sais, son of, restored to office by
Cambyses, 179.
High roads of modern China, ii. 342.
Highlands from Elam to the Caucasus,
413-
Hilprecht, Prof., on inscribed slabs of
lapis-lazuli ; on Babylonian impre
cations, 290.
Himyarite coins, 508.
Himyaritic inscriptions, 497.
Hiouen-thsang, ii. 44, 125 ; on Khotan,
138, 144.
Hiouen-tsong, Tang emperor, ii. 134;
partiality for Taoism or, 144 ; ab
dication of, 173.
Hired labour, contracts for, 33S.
Hirhor, usurpation of, 178.
Hirusha, land of, 49.
Hisn el Ghorab remains and inscrip
tions, 504, 505.
"Histoire Generale de la Chine," tr. by
Pere De Mailla, ii. 479.
Historical geography of Asia Minor,
414.
"Historical Records" of Ssema-tsien,
ii. 478.
Historiographers, Board of, ii. 24 ;
of Tse, courageous veracity of, 26 ;
of Tai-tsou-ming, put to death,
239 ; complaints of eunuchs by,
246.
History of Chinese pottery, translation
of Nien's, ii. 280.
Hittite country invaded by Assurnasir-
apal, 298 ; power at its height,
291 ; kingdom, flourishing period
of, 295 ; monuments, 386 ; re
mains, 413 ; remains and inscrip
tions, 414.
Hittites mentioned in astronomical
work, 278 ; Agukakrime's negotia
tions with, 286 ; of Syria, 412.
Hoai-tsong, last Ming emperor, ii.
249, 250.
Hoang-ho, change of course of, ii. 287.
Hoarding of copper forbidden, ii. 160,
163; laws against, repealed by

522

INDEX.

Wang-ngan-shi, 195 ; renewed in
1 160, 196.
Ho-chang and Tao-sse, Christians
compared to sectaries of, ii. 277.
Hoei-tsong, Sung emperor, given to
trifles and Taoism, ii. 171, 172;
abdicates, 173.
Hoei-tze, private bonds, ii. 193, 196-8.
"Hoes and cloth " = wealth, ii. 58.
Hojjah, Queen Sayyidah as, 522.
Holdings, size of average, ii. 192.
Holy island of Diodorus, 514.
" Homage of their commerce" desired
from Tatars of Western Asia, ii.
109.
Homogeneous character of Chinese
civilization, ii. 290.
Hong-mao, memorial against, ii. 277.
Hong merchants, early parallel to,
ii. 236, 335-7.
Honorific decrees of Carian and Lycian
cities, 431.
"Honoured head" of the family, tab
let of, ii. 69.
Horemhib, edict of, 135-8.
Horse, worship of, in China, ii. 37 ;
trade with Tatary, 135, 258 ; fairs
on Tatar frontiers, 240 ; demand
for, 246-8.
Horses on Egyptian monuments, 150 ;
boarding out of, under the Inno
vator, 187 ; Chinese forbidden to
keep, 230 ; price of, in tea, 238 ;
"the people made to maintain,"
240, 241 ; disuse of, in China,
257,258.
Horus and Set, patrons of Upper and
Lower Egypt, 38 ; Horus or Hor-
siesi pleading for his father Set,
124 ; patron god of three nomes,
100 ; as the beloved son, 199.
Hosea, 305, 306.
Hospitality in Cretan towns, 469 ; in
Kabyle villages, 468, 535.
Hotel regulations of modern China,
i'- 343-
Hoti, Egjptian security called, 209.
Ho-ti, emperor of Eastern Han, ii. 117;
eunuchs employed by, 121.
Hottentots resemble the Chinese,
541-
Hounds of Lu, ii. 266.
Hours of labour regulated by trade
guilds, ii. 320.
" House of books" and "house of in
struction" in Egypt, 55 ; "house
of fruits," mentioned in Telloh in
scriptions, 246, 263 ; "house of the
graver" at Lagash, 261 ; "house
of night " of the goddess Nindar,
273.

Housebuilding, vocabulary of, 233 ;
ancient method of, in China, ii. 20.
"Households, part of the Code for
regulating," ii. 291.
Houses, price of, in ancient Babylonia,
337; belong to women in Minicoy,
567; modern Chinese, ii. 381.
How-qua, generous acts of, ii. 334, 335.
How-tseih, legend of, 31, 276, ii. 18, 19.
Hpt'faa, nomarch of Siout, endowment
of, 158.
Hsing=surname, character for, ii. 21.
Hubuschia, country on the Upper Zab,
298.
Hue, Father, quoted, 135.
Hui-tze, Chinese sophist, ii. 87, 88.
Human sacrifices last allowed by
Mantchus, ii. 275.
Hundred houses of Locrians, 417 ;
Hundred or commune of four
hamlets, ii. 44 ; houses of Chinese
villages, 49 ; families, 107.
Hundreds and tithings, duties of neigh
bours in, ii. 356.
Hung-woo = Warlike Fortune, name of
first Ming emperor's period, ii.
237-
Huns, antagonism of, to Han traders,
ii. 109 ; victory over northern, 1 1 7.
Hunting, impropriety of excess in,
ii. 129.
Hunts, royal, in ancient China, ii. 31 ;
of the Incas, 456.
Husbands and wives, relative size of,
on Egyptian monuments, 200 ;
relations of, in ancient China, ii.
65-7; proposed to make Malabar
husband his wife's guardian, 471.
Hwai, the boundary between Kin and
Sung empires, ii. 174.
Hwang-ti, mythical emperor of China,
ii. 16, 17, 29; sacrifice to, 37; the
Yellow emperor, 92.
Hwan-ti, ii. 115.
Hway, king of Seang, rebuked by
Mencius, ii. 33.
Hydrussa, ancient name for Tenos,
437-
Hyksos inscription, ideal of domestic
virtue in, 198.

Ia-mukin-sumi, son of Hasmar, 297.
Iasilikaia, uncertain sex of figures in
bas-reliefs of, 439.
Iberian constitution according to Stra-
bo, 457; migration, line of, 460.
Iberians, communism of Spanish, 5 14 ;
of Transcaucasia, 455.
Ibn Batuta, description of Malabar,
563 ; on China, ii. 215, 255, 256.

INDEX.

523

Ibn Khaldun on Berbers, 535.
Ibn Khordadbeh on Jewish merchants
in China, ii. 140, 217.
Ibn Rashid, 502.
Ibru-naharan, of Minaean inscriptions,
500, 501.
Ice, use of, in ancient China, ii. 4.
Ichneumon in Egyptian wall paintings,
150.
Iddina-marduk, merchant and money
lender, 348, 350, 355 ; slave mort
gaged by, 355.
Ideals of Chinese thinkers, ii, 96.
Ideogram for mother, 361.
Ideograms gradually superseded by
syllabic signs, 234 ; similarity of
Akkadian and Chinese, ii. 485, 486.
Igigi, spirits of heaven, 233 ; Igigi and
Annunaki war against Pennsyl-
vanian expedition, 290.
Ihi-Samas, eldest son of Ubarsin,
divides paternal inheritance, 32S.
Ilani-erba, or Ilu-erba, deals in land
and renounces his mother, 328,
364-
Ilsahr. king of Saba, 507.
Iltani, a woman with separate pro
perty, 368.
Iltani, the sister of Taramka, mar
riage contract of, 369.
Iluvars, Malabar caste derived from
Ceylon, 554.
Images of gods recovered by Agukak
rime, 286.
Immeru, one contract tablet of reign
of, 284.
Immovables, law of Egypt on, 196.
Imoschag, name used by Towareks or
Touaregs, 539.
Imperial college, ii. 143 ; college found
ed at Nanking, 254 ; dynasty did
not always govern all China, 10 ;
farms, establishment of, 244 ; pro
gresses objected to, 246 ; herds,
regulations of Chow Li on, 52 ;
library founded, 143 ; library pre
sided over by Hiouen-thsang's
grandfather, 144 ; manifesto in
time of scarcity, 112; receptions,
Mongol etiquette at, 232 ; sacri
fices offered by prince oi T'sin, 8 1.
Imprecation, forms of, 343,344 ; against
destroyers of records, by Gudea,
244; of Rammannirari and Tig
lath-pileser, 290.
Inalienable family lands, ii. 358.
Incas, royal marriage customs of, 1 10,
ii. 454 ; titles and policy of, 453.
Income tax, graduated under the
Tang, ii. 151 ; levied on large
land owners, 229.

Indebtedness not a criminal offence in
Babylonia, 356.
" Independence of mind " of Malayali,
.549-
India, land trade between Mesopo
tamia and, 232 ; trade between
Arabia and, 519; communication
between Western China and, ii.
215.
Individual rights, Chinese limits to,
i'- 357-
Inequality of wealth, Cretan laws
meant to discourage, 467.
Infanticide unknown in Egypt, 72.
Inheritance of children in Egypt, 200 ;
inheritance of father and sister
divided in Babylonia, 368 ; Gortyn
code on, 477-9 ; Syro-Roman law
book on, 494 ; law of, in Oman,
528; in East Africa, 532, 533;
among Kabyles of Algeria, 537 ;
rules of, in Canaries, 543 ; inheri
tance and descent through women
of royal families in Malabar, 550;
of children from both parents,
Thesawaleme on, 560 ; division of,
in Wang family, ii. 301.
Inner tribunal of eunuchs, ii. 137.
Innkeepers transmit goods securely,
ii. 341.
Innovations, mode of introducing
praiseworthy, ii. 375.
Innovator, the, see Wang-ngan-shi.
Inoculation introduced in China, ii.
213.
Inscription of workmen employed by
Agukakrime, 286 ; inscriptions on
shields, ornaments, etc., in Berber
characters, 540, 549 ; faithfully re
produced by Chinese scholars, ii.
27 ; inscriptions of T'sin Dynasty,
100 ; on ancient Chinese staffs, ii.
497-
Instruction to follow wealth and pre
vent class distinctions, ii. 32.
Instructions of Amenemhat, 78, 84,
106.
" Insubordinate son" in Algeria, 538.
Insurance system not used in Cnina,
i'- 379-
Interest, rate of, in China, 185 ; Egypt
and in some Kabyle tribes, 187 ;
limited by Bocchoris, 193 ; rate
of, for agricultural loans in Egypt
and Babylonia, 193, 334 ; evasion
of laws against compound, in
Egypt, 195 ; rate of, in Babylonia
and Nineveh, 322 ; origin of, 323 ;
interest on loans sometimes paid
to temples, 332 ; rate of, reckoned
sexagesimally, 334 ; allowed to

524

INDEX.

double the principal, 346; rate of,
in Georgia, 459 ; in Ceylon not to
exceed principal, 569 ; essay on
interest in China, ii. 323 ; benefit
of loans at, 325, 326, 328 ;
maximum rate of, in China, 327 ;
interest on loans made to deter
mine rents, 347.
Interment, rites of, performed by
special class in Crete, 482.
Internuptial gifts, limited by Gortyn
code, 478.
Interval between marriage and " estab
lishment," ii. 67.
Intramural burial forbidden in Egypt
and China, 163 ; under Gudea, 243.
Inundations from Chinese rivers, ii.
10 ; of Hoangho, 230.
Ionia, Carians and Leleges occupying,
417-
Ionian and Carian mercenaries in
Egypt, 313, 315.
Irba-marduk, 291 n. l.
Irba-sin, founder of fifth Babylonian
Dynasty, 297.
Irish Jaw tracts of loans, pledges,
etc., ii. 420.
Iritisen, his wisdom, 102 ; his family,
no.
Iron bar as standard of value, 538 ;
iron foundries, scale of, in China,
ii. 358 ; iron money of Leang
Dynasty, 158 ; in Fokien and
Sz'chuen, 193-5 > sources of, i.
232.
Irrigation works, decay of, under
Ptolemies, 76 ; Egyptian methods
of, 79 ; phrases concerning, 341 ;
irrigation of Etruscans, 426 ; irri
gation and other remains in
Transcaucasia, 459 ; irrigation
works at Kohaiti, ? ancient Koloe,
510; irrigation and agriculture in
Peru, ii. 454.
Irtabi, daughter of a Babylonian king,
294.
Isaac, holy father, 160.
Isaurian inscription giving mother's
name in genealogy, 434.
Ishmaelites and Midianites in story of
Joseph, 500.
Island of spirits with snake king,
Egyptian story of, 517.
Island of women, original of legendary,
454-
Ismail Pasha, 72.
Ismi-dagon, king of Nisin, 273.
Ispuinas, inscriptions of, 302.
Istar, animals enamoured of the
goddess, 250 ; kings of Ur call
themselves husbands of, 273.

Isullanu, the gardener beloved of Istar,
250.
Itahuantui-suya, Peru called, ii. 452.
Italian trade with China, ii. 233 ;
Chinese labourers compared with
Italian, 314 ; Italian and Egyptian
weights, 447.
Itamara the Sabaean = King Jethaa-
mar, 507.
Itti-bel, father of Sargon of Agade,
257.
Itti-marduk-baladu succeeds his father
Nebo-ahi-iddin, 352, 353, 357-

Jade gate or Yu-mon passage, 18, 95 ;
Chinese enthusiasm for, 232.
Jaffna, customary laws of, 559, 569.
Janmi or jenmkar, Malabar landowner,
569- . , ..
Japan, Chinese intercourse with, 11.
130.
Japanese pirates, inroads of, ii. 247.
Jareb of Hosea perhaps = Irba or
Iriba, a name for Sargon, 307.
Jati, the Deliverer, Minaean king's
title, 502.
Jaua, son of Humri=Jehu, the son of
Omri, 299.
Jedail Bajjan, son of Karibail Watar,
507, 508.
Jedail Dirrih, works at Mareb by, 506,
507.
Jehoahaz carried into Egypt, 316.
Jehoiakim submits to Nebuchadnezzar,
317-
Jekrubmalik Watar, king of Saba,
507.
Jenm or Janmam = hereditary freehold,
569.
Jenm right valued at one-third the
estate, 573 ; successive parts
transferred by deed, 574.
Jenmkar, see Janmi.
Jeremiah, foreign policy of, 316.
Jerusalem, orientation of temple at,
ii. 441.
Jesuit missionaries, first, ii. 248.
Jesuits implicated in dynastic intrigues,
ii. 281.
Jethaamar or Jetaamir Bajjan, 507.
Jews, fair complexion of Eastern, 26.
John of Florence (De' Marignolli), ii.
235-
Joint ownership in Georgia, 458.
Josiah slain at Megiddo, 316.
Juao and Thuao, Egyptian names of
Queen Tii's parents, 293.
Judah, kingdom of, increases in impor
tance, 296.
Judgments on bad rulers, ii. 33.

INDEX.

525

Jupiter Triphylius, temple to, in Panara,
514.
Jus gentium, whence derived, 10.
Just weights and measures, 75.
Justice, administration of, in Egypt, 56,
86 ; justice and wealth of Chinese
in 9th cent. A.D., ii. 141 ; Chinese
administration of justice, ii. 264,
265.
Justified, also rendered vh-i'dique,
term for righteous dead, 73.
Justinian on Armenian succession,
559-
Kabyle, partnerships and rahnia
pledges, 187, 534 ; Kabyle, Chinese
and Egyptian rate of interest,
193 ; betrothal and marriage
distinct among Kabyles, 206 ;
Kabyle communism, 469-; Kabyles
of Algeria, customs of, 538, 539 ;
complexion, 534 ; local govern
ment, 534-6 ; public hospitality
among, 535 ; kanouns or custo
mary codes, 536 ; law of inheri
tance, 537.
Kahun, wills found at, 203.
Kak, temple of, endowed by Amen
hotep the wise, 159.
Kaldu, land of the Chaldasans, 264.
Kallima-sin, perhaps same as Elish-
kullimasin, 292.
Kallisthenes and Aristotle on Baby
lonian chronology, 256.
Kam't, or " black land," 26.
Kanam or mortgage, sometimes a rent
paid in advance, 570 ; fines
payable on renewal of, 574.
Kang-hi, ii. 2 17 = Profound peace,
period of, 274, 281 ; sacred edict
of. 356, 357-
Kansu, province of, the ancient Yung,
formerly a part of Shensi, ii. 18.
Kanuri of Bornu, female descent
among, 538.
Kao-tsong, Sung emperor, ii. 174, 196.
Kao-tsou, founder of Tang Dyn., ii.
132.
Kaquimna, 40 ; Book of, 45, 46.
Karaburias, named in Assyrian in
scriptions, 290.
Karahardas, king of Kardunias, deal
ings with Assyria, 288.
Karaindas of Kassite Dyn., 288 ;
temple built by, 289.
Karakorum, furthest point reached by
Rubruk, ii. 216.
Karamat, daughter of Pisebkhan, 116.
.Kardunias, a name for Babylonia,
264 ; the "garden of the lord of
the lands," 289.

Kar-Istar, battles between Kardunias
and Assyria at, 2SS.
Karibail, brother of Ilsahr, king of
Saba, 507.
Karibail the Wise, inscription of, 506.
Karibail Watar, 507, 508 ; inscription
of, 509.
Karnavan, senior member of tarwad,
555 ; powers of, compared to
Basque seigneur, 556, 557.
Karnu, chief city of Minasans, 498 ;
modern Es-souda, 499.
Karra-na-Samas, fortress of sun god,
built by Hammurabi, 282.
Karthlos, ? = Khaldis, 458.
Karzi-jabku, grant to, 342, 343.
Kasabeh, Arabian heiress, 509.
Kashgar, tributary to China, ii. 117.
Kassaba, size of reduced, 74.
Kassi, Babylonia called iand of the,
down to 9th century, 296.
Kassite kings of Babylonia, Egyptian
correspondence with, 96 ; Kassite
Dynasty, 258 ; relations of Kas-
sites and Cushites to Chaldasans,
287 ; Kassites and Elamites,
blanks in list of kings, 285 ; Kas
site Dynasty contemporary with
1 8th and 19th Egyptian Dynas
ties, 291 ; Kassite names common
down to Nebuchadnezzar, 296.
Kassunadinahi, son of Sippai, 297.
Katabothra, subterranean water chan
nels, 422.
Keang-yuen, mother of How-tseih, ii.
18.
" Keeper of lost property," ii. 217.
Kegler, President of Mathematical
Board, ii. 281.
Kelt-Iberian alphabet, affinities of,
462.
Kema, queen-mother, 1 19.
Kenna, workman who petitions Amen
hotep about house, 58.
Kepir, conjecturally identified with
Byblos, 98.
Keralolpatti, or origins of Kerala,
548.
Kesra (Chosroes), son of Persian king
Kobad, ii. 129.
Kethuba, in Jewish marriage con
tracts, 367.
Keturah = incense, 503.
Kha or double, theory of, 153, 160.
Khafra-ankh, tomb of, 50 ; dog repre
sented on, 149 ; priest of the
pyramid of Khafra, 152.
Khaldias or Khaldikas = ChaIybes,
304-
Khaldis, Urardhian deities, ? = Karth
los, 303.

526

INDEX.

Kharoubas, associated Kabyle villages,
534-
Khenmes, Egyptian steward or agent,
. 83.
Khien-ao, uncivilized charity of, ii. 75.
Khita or Hittites, 386.
Khitan empire, height of its power, ii.
170.
Khitan Tatars invited by After Tsin,
ii. 165 ; Khitan government civil
ized, 168.
Khnum, patron god of three nomes,
150.
Khnumhotep, 78, 112; endowment of
ancestral temple of, 156.
Khorsabad, iron found at, 232 ; palace
of Sargon at, 250.
Khotan, ancient city of, 15; embassy
to China from, ii. 158; "tribute"
from, 215.
Khrishna and Lakshmi = baron and
feme, ii. 462.
Khuenaten = Amenhotep IV., 120.
Khufu, Khafra-ankh, priest of his
pyramid, 50.
Kia-king, recent Tsing emperor, ii.
289.
Kiao-tze or bills of exchange, ii. 193,
195-
Kieh and Chow, ii. 89, 91.
Kien-lung's History of Ming Dynasty,
ii. 238,239; Kien-lung = " protec
tion of heaven," period of, 274,
286-9 ; edict of, 358 ; on title by
registration, 359.
Kien-wen-ti, grandson of Tai-tsou-
ming, deposed by his uncle, ii.
239.
Kin inherit conquests of the Leao, ii.
173 ; Dynasty of, falsely said to
have been ruined by literati, 179.
Kindred, duties of, ii. 379.
King, duke of Sung, refuses to divert
calamities, ii. 36, 37.
King-I on copper money, ii. 197.
Kingi, ancient name of land of Sumer
and Akkad, 230.
Kings of Saba and Raidan, 507.
King-te-ching, imperial pottery works
at, ii. 256.
King-ti succeeds his captive brother,
ii. 243.
Kinistan, ? Samarcand, ii. 149 n.
Kinsay = Kingsse, capital (Hangchow),
ii. 220.
Kin-tsong, Sung emperor treats, as in
ferior, with Kin, ii. 173 ; taken
prisoner, 174.
Kishlak or village group in Badak-
shan, ii. 44.
Knife money, ii. 58, 59.

Knots used for records in Peru, ii.
456.
Kobad, Persian king, ii. 128.
Koloe, remains of, at Kohaito, 510.
Koluppannayam, or " ploughshare
pledge," answering to Babylonian
mortgage, 571.
Komogrammats, 139.
Kong-sun-yang, see Chang Yang.
Konia = Iconium, inheritance by
women in 13th century at, 435.
Koshinga, pirate or privateer, ii. 275.
Kouyundjik, mounds of, 315.
Kuban stele, 97.
Kubla, capture of Tali by, ii. 177 ;
plants trees, 222, 233 ; vicarious
charities of, 224 ; Chinese estimate
of, 225.
Kudatku Bilik, Uigour poem, ii. 173.
Kudur Lagamar, name identified with
Chedorlaomer, 259.
Kudur-mabug, 260 ; father of Rimsin,
279.
Kudurnanchundi, Elamite king, 258.
Kukullanu buys and rents land, 347.
Kung-chiu, Chinese Giotto, ii. 61.
Kurasch (Cyrus) = shepherd, 233.
Kuri, Dravidian lottery, 568 ; Chinese
parallel to, ii. 332.
Kurigalzu recovers tablet of Dungi
from Elam, 254 n. ; the "un
equalled " king, 288 ; statue set
up by, 289.
Kurigalzu the younger, 288, 289.
Kustaspi of Kummuh (Commagene),
305-
Kwan, ballad of Prince, ii. 489.
Kwang-tsong, Sung emperor, ii. 175.
Kwan-tse on trade and luxury, ii. 324.
Kwan-tze or frontier bonds, ii. 193.

Labour cheap in ancient Egypt, 73 ;
hardships of, drawn by scribes,
105 ; labour tax in China, ii. 37,
38 ; under the Tang, 151 ; con
ditions of, in China, 296 ; un
stinted application to the soil of,
305, 306 ; conditions of, fixed by
custom, 312 ; labour tax in Peru,
455, 456.
Labourer, corn produced by one in
Egypt, 174 ; hired out by father
or mother in Babylonia, 338,
339 ; best off in richest dis
tricts of China, ii. 314; not to
be employed by officials without
authority, 365.
Labranda, temple belonging to the
city of, 419 n. ; Carian temple of,
514.

INDEX.

527

Ladak, marriage and succession in,
558.
Lady of the house, name for the law
ful wife in Egypt, 122, 125, 204;
sense of the plirase in Malabar,
552.
Lagash = Sirgulla, Sirbulla, Shirpuila,
etc., 239.
Laish and the men of Dan, 390.
Laissez faire, growth in China of the
doctrine, ii. 153.
Lake Moeris, 76.
Lamazou, wife of Pirhoum and Ilani-
erba, 329.
Lamentations of Isis and Nephtys, in.
Land surveyors one of three classes in
Egyptian enumeration, 7S ; land
tax or rent in Egypt, 130 ; lands
held ex officio, 129, 132 ; land of
the soldiers, the priests, the king,
and the :' remaining lands," 139 ;
land let for cultivation by the
year, 188 ; increase in number of
private landlords, 189 ; registra
tion of land in Egypt, 189, 190 ;
land of Punt, station between
Egypt and Babylonia, 270 ; land
paid for in kind, 344 ; land mea
sured by seed, 354 ; ownership of,
in East Africa, 532, 533 ; landed
property- in hands of Towarek
women, 539 ; "land or a garden "
¦= property in town or country,
562 ; land measured by seed in
Malabar, 570 ; land tenure and
taxation under the Han, ii. 150 ;
land tax remitted on reclaimed
land, 152; granted rent free to
cultivators, 190 ; granted to dis
trict colleges, 210 ; land tax, penal
character under Yung lo, 240 ;
grants of land to imperial rela
tions, 244 ; registered for taxation,
252 ; for cultivation, how obtained,
303 ; owned by families, 309 ;
cost of small plots, 314, 315 ;
land sold after a famine restored
lo original owners, 358 ; not to be
taken up in large quantities, 357 ;
may not be sold to a creditor,
358 ; land and buildings sold
separately, 359 ; partition of, in
Peru, 455.
Lane, on cost of living in Egypt, 72 ;
on funeral of tyrannical Bey, 74 ;
on property buried with the dead,
162.
Language of Mitani, letter of Tush
ratta in, 293.
Lao-tze, Confucius' confession to, ii.
84, 87 ; doctrine of his followers,

92 ; his theory of perfection, 93,
94 ; Lao-tze and Buddhism, 147.
Lapis- lazuli, called blue stone of Babel,
Laranda and other typical names,
418 n.
Large estates, management of, in
Egypt, 106, 107 ; discouraged in
China, ii. 50 ; large estates under
the Sung, 190, 191.
Larissa, range of the name, 418 ; sup
posed city in Arabia, 517.
Larsa, early kings of, 254; Larsa, a
city of Sumer, 264 ; identified
with Ellasar of Genesis, 266 ;
founded by Ur Bau, 272 ; kings
of, 278 ; perhaps connected with
Larissa, 418.
Lasi-rab, king of Guti, 265 n.
Later Egyptian monarchy, ii. 408.
Latifundia in ancient Egypt, 67, 79.
Lato, inscription of, 472 n. ; treaties
between Lato and Olus, 475.
Law suit between Sininana and Ibba-
sin, 329.
Laws of Egyptians in eight books,
56 ; civil and domestic customary
law, 181-223 ! Babylonian do.,
320-79 ; Akkadian law tablet,
360-71 ; Mazaceni, laws of, 416 ;
Rhodes, maritime law of, 443 ;
Charondas, laws of, 445 ff. ; of
Zaleucus, 447, 448 ; of the Massa-
lians, 452 ; Georgian laws, 458
ff. ; of Crete and Sparta, 467 ff. ;
Gortyn laws, 476-85 ; Syro-
Roman laws, 487-95 ; Saba?an
marriage law, 523 ; Kabyle laws,
535 ; ancient Chinese laws, see
Chow Li ; laws against Taoism,
ii. 206 ; modern Chinese laws,
ii. 344-74-
Lawyers, no such profession in China,
ii. 371.
Layard, Sir Henry, on fair Jews. 26.
Leagues and covenants between feudal
princes, ii. 80.
Leang Dynasty, financial experiments
of, ii. 158.
Leao Dynasty, ii. 166 ; said to have
been ruined by Buddhists, 179 ;
representatives of early, 248.
,. Learned ladies-maid of Chinese novel,
ii. 296.
Learning, praises of, 104.
Lease of Ptolemy Philopator, 188 ;
tablets concerning leases, 334 ;
lease of sacred pastures, 438 ;
lease and mortgage combined,
358 ; lease and loan in China, 358,
363; doctrine of, 421-3; leases

INDEX.

as security for loans in Ireland,
420-3.
Legal day's work, duration of, in China,
ii. 310.
Legal documents, how preserved in
Egypt, 190.
Legendary races of Greece, 417, 418.
Legislators, semi-mythical Greek, 425.
Legitimate, Egyptian law regards all
children as, 215.
Leleges, wall of, at Iassus, 428 ; Leleges
and Carians, tradition respecting,
428.
Lelex, matriarchal story concerning,
417.
Lemnos, pre-Hellenic inscription from,
28, 387,417,418.
Leo the Isaurian sends embassy to
China, ii. 139.
Lepsius on origin of Phoenicians, 385.
Le-Sze, Premier of Tsin-hwang-ti, ii.
101, 103.
Letters conveyed by private carriers,
"¦ 34i-
Lettres edifiantes, imperial charities
described in, ii. 279, 285.
Leuco-Syrians, 386 ; in Asia Minor,
414 ; Leuco-Syrian religion, 420.
Li, king of Chow, ii. 78.
Li, various meanings of, ii. 42 ; accord
ing to. Semedo, 271.
Liaio, see Leao.
Liaou-tchi on luxury and extravagance,
ii. 324.
Libit-adar, 273.
Libraries and schools in ancient
Egypt, 55-
Lieh-tze, Taoist, quoted, ii. 94, 95.
Light-haired stocks, 27.
" Light " and " heavy " money of
Chinese economists, ii. 157.
Li-ke-yong, " the one-eyed dragon,"
ii. 165.
Li Ki, on avoiding the name, ii. 25 ;
on revenue and expenditure, 35 ;
on fiscal usages of antiquity, 38 ;
on official salaries, 49 ; on public
works, 61 ; on mourning for a
nurse, 69 ; on duties of children,
73, 74 ; on rules of ceremony, 85 ;
on fortifications, 106 ; on educa
tion, 118 ; date of, 475.
Li-ma-teou, Chinese name of Matteo
Ricci, ii. 266.
Limu or eponyms in Assyria, 300.
Limurike, ? Tamilike, 545.
Lin-tin, controversy with Choo-hi of,
ii. 207.
Lin-tsung-yuan, sympathises with
Buddhism, ii. 148 ; apologue by,
152.

Lin-wen-hi on Ming degeneracy, ii.
326.
Lion, Akkadian name for, 231.
Lists of Babylonian kings, 257 ; of offi
cers and functions from Kouyun-
dj'ik, 342.
Literary controversies in China, ii.
206 ; literary and aesthetic diver
sions, 381.
Literati, complaints of northern, ii.
241 ; doctrine of, one of the three
religions of China, 267 ; Jesuits
adopt the dress of, 266.
Literature, losses to, between the Han
and Souy Dynasties, ii. 130 ;
under the Tang, 143.
Li-tse-ching, rebel emperor, ii. 250.
Li-tsong, Sung emperor, ii. 250.
Little DeIos = Puteoli, 395.
Littleton on mortgages, ii. 417.
Liturgies, or funeral services, charges
for, 166 ; sale of, with other pro
perty, 167.
Lixus, remains of, 404.
Lo, Ming artist in pottery, ii. 256.
Loans in Egypt, China, and Baby-
Ionia, 194 ; of grain from Baby
lonian temples, 246 ; loans and
leases, parallelism between, 323 ;
of corn and' money in ancient
Babylonia, 332 ; at interest in
Assyrian deeds, 345 ; distinction
between loans for necessity, trade,
and prodigality, ii. 327.
Local organization under the Chow,
ii. 42-4 ; local government, work
ing of, in China, 361.
Locrians called Leleges, nobles count
descent through women, 417 ;
Locrians as ship-builders, 452.
Loess, districts of China, ii. 3, 6 ;
theory of loess formation, 7.
Log huts in Asia Minor, 415.
Longevity, instances of, in China, ii.
244 n.
Long-Hfe loan companies, ii. 377 n.
Loo and Chow, relations between, ii.
81.
Lost property, Mongols and Ortos'
rules concerning, ii. 279.
Lottery loans or money clubs, ii. 332,
333-
Lou-siou-fou, last adherent of Sung
Dyn., ii. 177, 178.
Loutea, the literati, ii. 264.
Low prices in 17th century China, ii.
264, 270.
" Lower sea" in Gudea's inscriptions,
269.
Loyalty to a dynasty not patriotism,
ii. 179.

INDEX.

529

Loyang the eastern court, ii. 106.
Lugal-girinna, called Sargon, ii. 259.
Lulumi, 289.
Lusitanians and LacedEemonians, 460.
Luxury denounced under the Hans,
ii. in ; Chinese writers on eco
nomic effect of, 324-327.
Lycian monuments to women, 427 ;
settlements deserted in summer
time, Herodotus on, 428 ; league of
33 towns, 429 ; method of tracing
descent through mother, 429 ;
Lyciarchissa and other offices,
432.
Lyctus, inscription of, 471 ; treaties
with, 475.
Lycurgean views of Chinese general, ii.
112.
Lycurgus, Herodotus on, 466 ; legis
lation of, 467 ; Rhetra, 472 ; inno
vations, probable character of his,
4S5-
Lydia reconciled with the Medes,
317.
Lydian influence on Greek religions,
416.
Lydians, invention of retail trade as
cribed to, 416.

Mabiou, M. Maspero on the, 57.
Macao, Portuguese factory at, ii. 262 ;
foreign trade restricted to, 275.
Macartney, embassy of Lord, ii. 238.
Maccarius S., 207.
Macrones, descendants of ancient,
439-
Madhi and Misru, strife between, 500.
Magan, Miluch, Gubi and Nituk, 269 ;
mines of, worked in third Egyptian
Dynasty, 270.
Magistracies of 5, 10, and 30 at
Carthage, 393.
" Magistrate's china," ii. 256.
Magnesite found at Nipur, 250.
Magic powers of the Non-Human,
237-
Mago, quoted by Roman writers on
agriculture, 409.
Magpa, husband of Tibetan heiress
called, 558.
Mahaffy, Prof, his translation of Greek
wills found in Egypt, 221.
Mahomedan money-lenders, ii. 227.
Mahomedans plundered by Chinese
usurers, ii. 337.
" Maid of a village " in Samoa, 470.
Ma'in, kings of, 497, 502 ; Mainu
Misran, 501 ; Ma'in and Jathil,
kings of, 502 ; site and remains
of, 503.
VOL 11. — p.c.

Mainotes and Tzaconians, archaic
dialects and modern customs of,
486.
" Maintenance," counterpart to English
laws against, ii. 371.
Makarib, earliest Sabasan rulers called,
503-
Malabar, counterpart to Egyptian
custom in, 183 ; all leases in
Malabar have the form of mort
gages, 323 ; mortgages in Malabar,
354 ; Malabar and Egyptian
nusbands, parallel between, 550 ;
parallel to Egyptian marriage
contract, 554 ; lotteries or money
clubs in, 566 ; Malabar and Egyp
tian tenure compared, 569, 570,
574 ; Malabar marriage act, pro
posals for a, ii. 458 ; parallel to
Egyptian husband's contributions,
473-
Malayalam, how related to Tamil,
545-
Malayali and Basque parallel to
Egyptian marriage contracts, 21 1 ;
date of earliest Malayali deeds,
545-
Male and female assemblies of Mini-
coy, 567.
Maleficent powers of the air, 237.
Mallas and Malayali, ii. 440.
Malta, language, etc., of, 404.
" Man the son of his god," 237 ; man
and citizen synonymous in Sumer
and Akkad, 266.
Mana, Samoan conception of, 236.
Man-chan advocates free trade and
loans at interest, ii. 326.
Mandarin dialect compared to Latin,
ii. 264.
Mandeville, after Odoric, on inn
keepers of Jamchay, ii. 223.
Manetho, 38, 42 ; ii. 399.
Mang-tze, see Mencius.
Manichaeism or Magianism in China,
ii. 149.
Manna, people of, 311.
" Manner of the Zidonians," 390.
Mantchu Dynasty, foundation of, ii.
248; emperor revenges hisfather's
murder, 249 ; dynasty established,
249-251 ; soldiers not allowed to
borrow, 279 ; emperors, vacant
lands granted by, 357.
Mantchu Christian, arguments ad
dressed to, ii. 282.
Mantua, duodecimal divisions in, 424.
Manual of precedence, 76.
Manufactures in Egypt, 100 ; com
bined with agriculture in China,
ii. 304-307- M M

53°

INDEX.

Manumission of slaves and their
children in Egyptian wills, 222.
Manurial value of Nile water, ii. 410.
Manzi, ii. 216.
Maonites, various readings for, 499.
Mapillahs, origin of, 546 ; as tenants
in Malabar, 573.
Marco Polo on climate of Badakshan,
16 ; on island of women, 455, 567 ;
arrives at the court of China, ii.
177 ; on paper money, 198 ; his
journeys in China, 218 ; his
description of China, 219 ; of
Chinese manners and customs,
220; on population of Hang-chow,
221 ; hostelries and highways,
222 : lake Si-hou and water
parties, 223 ; public granaries,
223, 224 ; orphan asylums and
the grand canal, 224, 225 ; on
paper money, 225, 226 ; revenue
of Hang-chow, 226 ; return to
Venice, 229.
Marcus Aurelius, embassy from, to
South China, ii. 1 17.
Marduk (Merodach), called " Supreme
Patesi," 262.
Marduk abal iddin, see Marduk-
apal-iddin.
Marduk-apal-iddin, king of Babylon,
291 ; boundary stone of, 291, 342.
Marduk-belatsuikbi allied with Elam
and Chaldasa, 300.
Marduk-belusate rebels against his
brother, 299.
Marduknadinahi carries off Assyrian
gods, 254, 296.
Marduknadinsum, son of Nabupalid-
din, 299.
Marduknaziraplu, grandson of Nebo-
ahi-iddin, 353.
Marduksapikullat, 296.
Mareb, dyke and elliptical temple of,
506.
Maritime law of Rhodes, 443.
Market, Egyptian, represented on 5th
Dyn. tomb, 98 ; market police of
Kabyles, 538; markets, Confucius
and Mencius on cornering and
monopolies, ii. 41 ; market regula
tions of Chow Li, 56, 60 ; market
gardener, fable of the, 152 ; mar
ket price and rates to be paid by
the state, 365.
Marriage settlements in Egypt, 115 ;
contracts, 204, 205, 207, 208, 210,
211, 215 ; contracts in Babylonia,
366-368, 369, 372, 373 ; laws of
Charondas on second, 449 ; con
tracts registered at Myconos, 453 ;
customs of Malabar kings, 549 ;

and inheritance, law of, in Mala
bar, 576, ii. 461 ; gifts of silk
limited in China, ii. 64 ; of the
eldest son needed to found a
dynasty, 67 n. ; universal in
China, 353 ; customs of Peru
vians, ii. 454 ; a contract, 460.
Married women appear as proprietors
in Rhodian inscription, 442.
Martu, south east of Babylonia, 265.
Marumakatayan or " sister's sons' in-
inheritance," ii. 548 ff.
Mas, names beginning with, 408.
Mashonaland gold mines, 405.
Maspero, Manual of Egyptian hier
archy, 61.
Massalia and Rhoda, coins of, copied,
402.
Masters of the Hall of audience, 62.
Ma-tang, Eunuch, patron of Ricci, ii.
266, 268.
Mater familias, mention of, in-Plautus
407 ; the only householder, 552.
Maternal grandfather, powers of, re
stricted, 488 ; maternal uncle,
powers of, in Africa, 532 ; import
ance of, in Arabia, 521.
Ma-twan-lin, Encyclopasdist, ii. 16,
98, 100; on state purchases, 56;
on Chow treasurer, 57 ; on primi-
tivecurrency, 58 ; on examinations,
73 ; budget of Wei cultivator,
given by, 113; on agrarian
economy of the Tang, 150-152 ;
Vissering's translations from, 158 ;
on Tang laws against hoarding,
161 ; end of his work, 189 ; on
students' fees, 209 ; on crowded
population, 219; continuator of,
255; "General Examination of
Records and Scholars," 479.
Mawan perhaps = Magan, 501.
Mawijat, fortress of Hisn Ghorab,
505.
Maxims of Ani on husbands and wives,
201-3 ; °f Babylonian law, 338.
Mazaceni, Strabo on the, 416, 538.
Mazdek, Persian socialist, ii. 128-
130.
Measures of land, Mesopotamian, ii.
442 ; Egyptian do., 445, 446.
Mecca, Makoraba, old name for, 503.
Mechanic and peasant, little difference
between, in China, ii. 310.
Mechanical skill and resources of
Egyptians, 100, 101.
Medes, Cimmerians and Scyths, com
bined movements of, 314 ; Medes
make Cyrus son of Astyages'
daughter, 318.
Media and Persia, 300.

INDEX.

53i

Medical aid to government employees,
ii. 372.
Mehat en Susekh, grandmother of
Shishak, 116.
Mehemet Ali and the taxation of
Egypt, 69, 74, 75 ; his tax on Waqf
lands, 179 ; his irrigation schemes,
ii. 41 1, 412.
Memorial against discussions between
scholars, ii. 207.
Memphis, high priest of, concerned with
funeral ceremonies, 166 ; chief
priest of Ptah, 169 ; chief priest
hood of, endowments of, 171 ;
name has same meaning as
Eridu, 252.
Men and Mentiu, query connected, 501.
Men and women, proportion of, accord
ing to Chow Li, ii. 71.
Men of Letters, position of, in feudal
China, ii. S2.
Mencius3 account of Confucius and the
Chun Tsew, ii. 25,26; on "get
ting the hearts of the people,"
32 ; on murder and misgovern-
ment, on over-taxation and fowl-
stealing, 33, 34 ; on game preserv
ing and results of benevolent
government, 40 ; on Chief of the
West, 45 ; on deforesting of hills,
52 ; on fostering, 69 ; on those
who unite the princes in leagues,
80 ; on difference of dialects in
different provinces, 80 n. ; against
profit seeking, 86 ; on life and
righteousness, 87 ; quoted by Choo
Hi on importance of agricultural
statistics, 211.
Mendez Pinto, Memoirs of, ii. 262.
Mendoza's Hist, of China, ii. 262 ; on
the literati, 264.
Menes, 17, 38 ; dyke attributed to, 42,
75-
Menkara, granddaughter of, 49 : priest
of, 50 ; inscription on coffin of,
1 12 ; chapter of ritual ascribed to
his time, 122.
Menodora, Pamphylian millionaire,
432.
Menon=scribe, a common surname in
Malabar, 564.
Mentuhotep, judge under Usurtasen
I., 56 ; benevolence of, 96 ; on
rival brothers, 199.
Mentuhotep, nth Dyn. queen, 61.
Menua, mountains of, in Gudea's in
scriptions, 269.
Menuas, mother of, 303.
Merchant, epithets applied to, in
syllabaries, 339.
Merenra, pyramid of king, 50.

Meri-antef, an eldest son, receives his
father's office, 204.
Merodach and Osiris, names written
with same ideograms, 339 ; Mero
dach, son of Ea, 237 ; Merodach
"filled a filling," ii. 20 n. (see also
Marduk) ; Merodach and Zar-
panit, gifts dedicated to, 286.
Merodach Baladan of Bit Jakin, 307 ;
his citadel destroyed by Sargon,
309-
Meruitensa, high steward of Neb-ka-
n-ra, 58.
Mesopotamia and Egypt, correspond
ence between, 120 ; restricted use
of the term, 263.
Metallurgy, traditional cradle-land of,
232.
Metals known in Mesopotamia, 232 ;
in ancient China, ii. 29; metal-
working tribes, i. 401.
Metayage, ancient Babylonian, not
clearly described, 336.
Mezzabarba, mission of, to China, ii.
277.
Miao-tze, barbarian, subdued, ii. 287 ;
sale of iron to, forbidden, 363.
Michaux's stone, 344.
"Middle Antiquity" of China, 22, ii.
14, 65, 121.
Middle Empire, religious feeling dur
ing, 170.
Middle Kingdom, ancient China so
called, ii. 21.
Midian, sons of, 503.
Mih Teih, advocate of universal love,
ii. 87-91.
Mikrat-sin engaged in sales and par
titions of land, 328, 331.
Milesians, colony in West Arabia
ascribed to, 516.
Miletus, sexes eat apart at, 417 ; arch
angels of the planets worshipped
at, 420.
Military lands, in what sense heredi
tary, 129; military qualities of
Egyptians, 242 ; military laws in
China include stock farming, ii.
373-
Mimmuria, name of Thothmes III.
in Tell el Amarna tablets, 293.
Mimean inscriptions — Haievy : No.
535, 5°° ! No. 578, 501 ; No. 392,
501 ; Glaser : No. 1000, 504 ;
Nos. 485, 481, pp. 507, 509 ; date
and bibliography of, 498.
Minaeans, history of, goes back to re
mote date, 270 ; Kama, chief town
of, 509.
Minanu and his son Ilam-ituram, par
ties to contracts, 328.

S32

INDEX.

Mineptah I., son of Rameses IL, 173.
Mines and quarries used by Egyp
tians, 95.
Ming Dynasty, founder of, ii. 230 ;
Chinese 18th century, 237 ; its
chronicles meagre, 245, 247 ; fall
of, 251 ; Ming-shi compiled, 280.
Ming-tsong, Sung Emperor, ii. 175.
Minicoy, 454 ; the original island of
women, 566-8 ; ianguage and
notation of, 546 ; physical features
of, islanders, 568.
Minimum wage in Chinese code, ii.
310.
Minister of Rites, selection of scholars
by, ii. 118, 120.
Minor Hans, one of the three king
doms, ii. 124.
Minos, laws of Crete ascribed to, 465.
Misru in Minaean inscription = Egypt,
500.
Missionaries, edict banishing Chris
tian, ii. 277.
Mitani, kingdom of, 291 ; Tushratta,
king of, 293 ; afterwards Bit Adini,
298.
Mizwad, earliest Minasan rulers called,
5°3-
Mnemones at Halicarnassus = Recor-
ders, 436.
Mnoians of Crete, 465.
Moderate taxation, ii. 263.
Modern Chinese, courtesy and hospi
tality of, ii. 293, 294.
Moharrak, fresh-water springs at sea
off, 515.
Mommsen on triple divisions of Gra?co-
Italians, 421.
Monasticism in China under the Tang,
ii. 146, 149-
Money, not used in ancient Egypt,
197 ; money weighed and grain
measured in Babylonia, 339 ;
"money of separation," 366, 367 ;
money cast by Yu and Tang, ii.
57 ; issued by cities, merchants
and traders' monetary unions, 58,
59 ; money changers, Chinese
dexterity as, 198 ; charges of
Dravidian money-lender, 566.
Mongols, first appearance of, ii. 174,
175 ; besiege Cai-fong-fu, 176 ;
copper-bearing provinces fall into
the hands of, 196 ; Mongol code
published, Mongols introduced
to Han-lin college, 230 ; fall of,
231 ; militia of loyai, 278; princes,
grants to Mongol, 379.
Monogamy the Egyptian ideal. 121 ;
marriage settlements work in
favour of, 217 ; of Sabaeans, 523 ;

still prevalent in nominally Maho
medan tribes, 539 ; the rule in
Canary Isles, 542 ; commoner in
Malabar than supposed, 550, ii.
466 ; of Minicoy islanders, i. 567.
Monopolizers and unfair traders, law
against, ii. 368.
Montecorvino, John of, Bishop of
Cambalec, ii. 231.
Months of Akkadian calendar, ii. 437.
Monuments, two types of feature on
earliest Egyptian, 25 ; built with
surplus wealth, 69 ; descriptive
sentences from the, 81.
Moplahs or Mapillahs, 546.
Morimene, temple of, 419.
Mortality of Egyptian expeditions re
corded, 90, 96.
Mortgage or pledge without possession
in ancient Egypt, 182 ; wife's
dowry secured by, 209 ; mort
gages and sales by various parties,
329, 330 ; peculiar form of, in
Tenos inscription, 437 ; mortgages
multiplied in civil disorders, 437 ;
mortgages and sales in Tenos
inscription, 453 ; mortgages on
Cyrnaean porticos and Halicar-
nassian stoa, 463 ; of slaves in
Gortyn code, 485 ; mortgages and
dowries in Ceylon, 561, 562 ;
Chinese law of mortgages, ii.
362.
Mortuum vadium, or mortgage, ii. 416,
417.
Moschi, land of, 312.
Moses of Chorene on Chinese, ii. 130.
" Mother law," traces of, 9.
Mother of Amten not a lady of pro
perty, 49 ; mother mentioned in
funeral inscriptions and papyri,
112 ; mother's father, inheritance
from, in, 114 ; Egyptian view of
the mother's claims, 200 ; mother
of children, her claim for main
tenance, 206 ; mother mentioned
in deeds concerning children, 215 ;
goddess called mother of the chil
dren of the town, 269 ; mother
and daughter renounce each other,
365 ; mother's family name used
by Latinized Etruscans, 427;
mother's family may inherit by
Syro-Roman code, 494 ; mother
or eldest lady rules Malabar
household, 555 ; mother main
tained by sons in East Africa,
531 ; mother of Kien-lung, ii. 288 ;
mother, customary rights of Chi
nese, 347-50 ; tales of heroic
mothers, 349, 350; Peruvians best

INDEX

533

informed about provinces of their
mothers, 453.
Motley on European admiration for
Chinese, ii. 85.
Mougel, the Barrage engineer, ii. 413.
Mou-hou-fou, religion of, ii. 149.
Mount Oui, sages of, sacrificed to, ii.
37-
Mourning, term of, in East Africa,
533 ; degrees of, for relatives, ii.
68-70.
Mouziris = Muyiri-kotta, 546.
Moveables, law of, in Egypt, 196.
Movement of population south and
west, temp. Rameses III., 295.
Mow, a ploughland, ii. 45.
Mulberry planters on bad times, ii. 45.
Mummification practised in Canaries,
544, and Peru, ii. 454.
Municipal offices all filled by women
in Lycia, 432.
Music, profession of hereditary, in
ancient China, ii. 54.
Mut, action against priest of, 60.
Mutabil, governor of Badanna, 278.
Mutbal, land of, 279, 287.
Mu-tsong-ming, ii. 248.
Miitter-recht, or female descent, in,
"3-
Mutual aid preferable to taxing, ii. 35.
Mutual relations or " belongings,"
rights of, in Ceylon, 560, 561.
Mutual responsibility of neighbours
enforced, ii. 151.
Mycenae, walls of, 405.
Myconos, marriage settlements regis
tered at, 561.
Mylasa, inscription from, refers to
leases in form of mortgage, 437,
573-
Myrina, art of, 463, 464.
Mythical emperors of China, ii. 17.
Nabataean inscriptions, Egyptian
parallel to, 1 10 ; Nabataean and
Nair parallel to Egyptian mar
riage customs, 211 ; Nabataean
inheritance, 438; Nabataeans =
Nabatu, 511 ; marriage customs
of, 511-13; Petra, capital of,
512 ; inheritance and descent
among, 512 ; tombs entailed in
the female line, 513 ; Nabataean
Book of Agriculture, forgery of,
521.
Nabonassar, Babylonian chronicle be
gins with, 304.
Nabonidus, antiquarian zeal of, 253 ;
may confound sosses and cen
turies, 255 ; antiquarianism and
unpopularity of, 318, 319.

Nabopolassar seizes Babylon for him
self, 314 ; alliance with Media,
316.
Nabuchodorosor, king of Pasi, 295.
Nabupaliddin, king of Babylon, 299.
Nabusumiskum, wars and treaties
with Rammannirari, ii. 297.
Nad, political division of Malabar,
547, 548.
Naharina of Egyptian inscriptions,
291.
Nai-hwangti, legendary Chinese em
peror, 32.
Nair, Bill of Mr. Sankaran, ii. 468.
Nairi land, upper and lower lakes of,
270.
Nairs, marriage law of, compared with
Egyptian, 113,457; Nairs com
pared to Plato's Guardians, 485 ;
military, polyandrous, serpent
worshippers, 546 ; assemblies, dis
cussion and voting at, 549 ; sup
port their mothers and sisters,
563 ; Nairs and Namboori (Nam-
butiri), priestly and military castes,
563-
Nakhb el Hajar fortress, 504 ; doubt
ful renderings of inscription of,
509.
Nambutiri Brahmins, 546 ; marriage
customs of, 555 ; pretensions of,
ii. 464.
Names given to statues, gates, etc., in
Babylonia, 272.
Nam-magh-ni, son-in-law of Ur-bau,
262.
Namrassit, king of Erech, 274.
.Nanking, capital of one of the Three
Kingdoms, ii. 124.
Naram-sin, foundation stone of, found
by Nabonidus, 253 ; brick stamp
of, found by Pennsylvanian ex
pedition, 254.
Nareae of Pliny = Nairs, 546.
" Narratives of the States," ii. 478.
Nask, sacred way from city of, 506.
Natnu, king of the Nabatu, defeated
by Assurbanipal, 511.
Natural barrage, regulating Nile flood,
ii. 410.
Natural religion in China, 146.
Nature gods of Mesopotamia, 236.
Naukratis, discoveries at, 316 ; remains
of, 406.
Nayars, see Nairs (called Protectors,
536).
Nazibugas, king of Kardunias, 288.
Nazimaraddas, king of Kardunias,
288 ; his benediction quoted,
290.
Neb=kurios, 215.

534

INDEX.

Neb = pourer of libations, 54.
Nebka, temple of King, 152.
Nebka-n-ra in the story of the Peasant,
58.
Nebo and Tasmit, givers of wisdom
to Assurbanipal, 242 ; Nebo, " the
legitimate" or established son,
238 ; worship of, introduced in
Assyria, 301.
Neboahi-iddin, banker, 348 ; his
partnerships, 349 ; other con
tracts, 350, 352 ; marriage con
tract, 372.
Nebt-hai, Egyptian word for wife,
125.
Nebuchadnezzar defeats Necho at
Carchemish, 317 ; character of
his inscriptions, 317 ; religious
innovations of, 319.
Nebuchadrezzar I., grant by, 342.
Necho invades Palestine, 316.
Necropolis of Thebes, 164; governor
of, at feud with nomarch, 165 ;
payments to priests of, 166.
Negative confession in the Ritual, 73.
" Neglect to observe celestial appear
ances," Chinese code on, ii. 373.
Neighbourhood = five families, ii. 42 ;
Sacred Edict on duties of, 356.
Neit, princesses act as priestesses of,
170.
Nekyah, Moslem settlement in case of
divorce, 367.
Nephews, inheritance by, 407 ; nephew
preferred to wife by Nair, 554.
Nephoris, profligate Egyptian step
mother, 220.
Neriglissar speculates in corn, 352.
Ners and sosses, reckoning by, 255,
ii- 434-
New Sumerian language, so called,
273.
New Year's Day, debts paid in China
by. "• 33i, 341, 370.
Newerkara, King, 61.
Nicsea, enamelled tiles of, 250.
Nien, head of King-te-ching pottery
works, ii. 280.
Night-police described by Marco Polo
and Davis, ii. 222.
Nile, the highway of Egyptian trade,
94 ; Nile as a god, hymn to the,
150, 151 ; laying aside of the Nile
Book, 151 ; rise of eighteen yards
required to make a good, 209 ;
source of Nile flood, ii. 410.
Nimrod (Xaramat), father of Shishak,
116.
Nimrod, king of Hermopolis, re
proached for letting horses starve,
150.

Nina or Nin, "the great one," 239 ;
daughter of Ea, 240.
Nine Bows, warriors of, on Egyptian
frontier, 133 ; nine classes of the
people in ancient China, ii. 54 ;
nine mountains, 12 ; nine pro
vinces, 11-15; nine rivers, 12;
nine vases of Yu, 81.
Nineteenth Dyn., change in character
of religious endowments under,
170.
Nineveh, site of, forgotten before
Xenophon, 239 ; fall of, 314.
Ningharsag, wife of Ellilla, 239.
Ningirsu, 239, or Ninib, husband of
Bau, 240.
Nini-haidu, father of a king of Lagash,
263.
Ninip, wall dedicated to god, 347 ;
" ancient interest to be paid to,"
348.
Ninmarki, daughter of goddess Nina,
240.
Nin-narsag, inscription to goddess,
268.
Niobe, so-called of the Sipylus, 414.
Nipur, Sippara, and Babylon, citizen
of, 241 ; American excavations at,
250 ; one of the most ancient
cities of Akkad, 261, 266.
Nisin, kings of, 267 ; inscriptions by,
2 73-
Niu-chm Tatars or Kin, ii. 170, 248.
Nizzuwah or Neswa in Oman, fort at,
505.
" Noble, not such a thing as being
born," ii. 77.
Nofer-hotep, scribe of a quarter of
Abydos, 267.
Nofert-ari-Aahmes, " beautiful com
panion of Aahmes," 119.
Nomarchs appointed not hereditary,
name of, adopted by his people,
41 ; position of, in table of pre
cedence, 62 ; nomarch of Siout,
62; his endowments, 157, 173;
nomarchs, etc., of Delta called
" kings " in Assyrian inscriptions,
3'3-
Nomes, ideograph for, 38 ; antiquity
of, rival chiefs of, 40 ; nome-gods,
150.
Nore, or dowered husband, 214.
Normal rate of interest in Babylonia,
332, 334-
Northern and Southern Empire, age
of, ii. 124.
North-west, embassy from far, ii. 139.
North wind, sweet breath of the,
81-3.
Xossis, Locrian poetess, 448.

INDEX.

535

Notices to travellers, 464, ii. 375.
Nouit Ammon, a name for Thebes,
.39-
Nouit, designation of ancient Egyptian
settlement, 38, 39.
Nubians, modern, as auxiliaries, 142.
Numbers of the objects sacrificed by
Gudea, 247.
Numidian rule of descent, 407.
Nuptial gifts in Theban and Memphite
contracts, 209.
Nuraghs of Sardinia, 446 ; builders
of, perhaps Iberians, 447 ; struc
ture of, explained by Arabian
forts, 505.
Nur-ramman, king of Larsa, 278.
Nutche, see Niu-chin.
Oases and crops in Oman, 526 ; oases
of Central Asia, ii. 5.
Oaths accepted as evidence, 191 ; of
women taken in Crete, 485 ; in
civil suits in Minicoy, 568.
" Observations of Bel," obscure pas
sage in, 241.
Occupations hereditary in Egypt, 109,
1 1 1 n., 126 ; how far hereditary in
ancient China, ii. 54, 55.
Octo- and nonogenarians at Peking,
ii. 221.
Ode of Pin, poetical Calendar, ii. 46.
Odes, Chinese, ii. 6, 18, 19, 24, 31,
45-9 ; general character of, 65 ;
quotations from, 66, 67 ; one as
cribed to Duke of Chow, 66 ; on
posthumous betrothals, 70 ; on
royal authority, 78 ; political de
nunciations, 79 ; on officers buried
with a duke of Tsin, 80; on feudal
and family relations, 80 ; appro
priate to different ranks, 81 ; on
rash ambitions, 1 10.
Odoric of Pordenone, on standard of
wealth in China, ii. 229 ; travels
of, 231-3.
Offending husband, Gortyn code on,
477 ; offending wife, Egyptian
moralists on, 477.
Office, conditions of, in Egypt and
China, 52 ; in Egypt only here
ditary, as other occupations were,
126; open to all classes in China,
ii- 55 ; given increasingly by ex
amination, 212.
Officers (or officials) of the nomarch's
court, list of, 62 ; formula for a
virtuous, 88 ; officers of Chow,
ii. 22, 54 ; officer of marriages,
70, 71 ; increase in numbers and
salaries of, 146; officer rewarded
for reporting on defective embank

ment, 285 ; roguery among, 334 ;
treatment of, by Chinese govern
ment, 341 ; duties of, under pre
sent dynasty, 360 ; responsible for
quality of goods supplied to go
vernment, 345 ; not allowed to
buy land within their jurisdiction,
369 ; powers and responsibilities
of local, 374, 375.
Ogatai adopts Chinese methods of
government, ii. 176 ; financiers
of, 225.
Ogyris, island, and Ogyr, tribe, on
Persian Gulf, 516.
Old age, respect for, among ancient
Albanians, 456 ; in East Africa,
53L
Old men maintained at public cost,
ii. 72.
Olus and Lato, treaty between, 475.
Oman, inhabitants of, called Naba-
taeans, 520 ; government of, 528.
Onam festival, presents to wives at,
55'-
Ophiodes, island in Arabian Gulf, 517.
Oppert, M, translations of legal texts
and contracts, 321.
Oranges "only fit for show at ban
quets," ii. 253.
Orchomenos, remains at, 422 ; inscrip
tion respecting loan to the city,
437-
Orientation of temples, ii. 438-441.
Orphanages, Chinese and Catholic,
ii. 224, 377, 378.
Ortos, old Mongol customs preserved
by, ii. 279.
Osiris, hymn to, eldest of the five gods,
122 ; title given habitually to the
dead, 170; name written with
same ideograms as Merodach, 252.
Olli, one of the later stages of Mala
bar mortgages, 571.
Ou-fang, Sung philosopher, ii. 213.
Oukimai, second Kin emperor, ii. 174.
Oulo, Kin emperor, ii. 175.
Ou-ni-tao-jin, pottery of, ii. 257.
Over-population, complaints of, ii. 284.
Over-production, not heard of in
China, ii. 320.
Overseer of royal workmen, 63.
Owner who does not occupy, status ot
Egyptian, 183 ; owner of the soil
in Arabia, he who gives it water,
525.
Ownership of land in Malabar retained
apart from any other right, 569.
Ox, wild and domestic, in ancient
Mesopotamia, 231.
Oxen for ploughing lent to the poor,
532, 535-

536

INDEX.

Pactum antichreticum, ii. 416.
Padan, land of, 286.
Painting left to amateurs in China,
ii. 381.
Palace of foreigners, ii. 269 ; " Palace
of imperial history," 280.
Palestine and Phoenicia, growth of
their cities, 295.
Palm, the sacred tree of Eridu, 231.
Pamir district, 15, 16.
Panagia Aphroditissa, 404.
Panara, chief city of Panchasa, 514.
Panbesa, letter of the scribe, 174.
Panchaea of Diodorus = Pa-anch of
Egyptian story, 517.
Pandae "ruled by women," 546.
Paneba, crimes of, 106; he "became
a mason," 127.
Pan-hoei-pan, lady annalist, ii. 117.
Pan-kang, change of capital by, ii.
18, 29.
Pan-kou, historian, ii. 117.
Pan-tchao, campaigns of, in Western
Asia, ii. 117.
Pantellaria, island of, 446.
Panther's skin worn by Egyptian
priests, 54.
Pao, modern Chinese hundred, ii. 361.
Pao-chang, headman of the hundred,
ii. 361.
Paou-sze, mistress of King Yew, ii. 2S.
Papal embassies to China, ii. 277, 281.
Paper money, abuse of, under the
Sung, ii. 180-8; paper bonds of
various sorts, 193-8; paper money
depreciated, 196, 197 ; paper cur
rency described by Marco Polo,
225, 226 ; Pegolotti on, 234 ; de
preciation of, 243, 253 ; disuse of,
2 54, 34o.
Paper umbrella makers' union, ii. 320.
Paper valuables, custom of burning,
ii. 115.
Paraschistes and taricheutes, 164, 166.
Parasu Rama, revelation of, ii. 464.
Parennin, letter of, on Kang-hi as lin
guist, ii. 280.
Parental kindness, " like great heaven,
illimitable," ii. 66.
Parents and children, relative size of,
on Egyptian monuments, 200.
Parthenia, a common name on Pelas-
gian track, 472.
Partheniae, colonization of Tarentum
by, 472.
Partition of land between Babylonia
and Assyria, 289.
Partnership of children in parents'
property in Egypt, 202 ; in Crete,
478-80 ; commercial partner
ships, 331-9.

Pasagga, a fire god, son of Ea, 240.
Pasi, dynasty of, 258.
Pastophores, marriage settlements in
a family of, 210.
Patamkar=lessee, 570.
Patara, oracle of Apollo at, 428.
Paternal grandfather, position of, in
China, ii. 70.
Patesi, title of priest-kings or vice
roys, 239 ; patesis of Nipur and
Sirgulla dedicate objects to Dungi,
272.
Patrimonial field, ii. 359, 360.
Paul, Christian convert, ii. 267.
Pawnshops, Chinese, ii. 331, 332.
Peacock, Hebrew word for, borrowed
from Tamil, 545.
Pearl fishery, lives sacrificed to, ii.
230, 232.
Peasant, budget of, under the Han, ii.
113-
Peasant, story of, 42, 58, 86.
Pegolotti, commercial guide to China,
ii. 233.
Pei-lin or Forest of tablets, ii. 477.
Peisias the Lycian, will of, 222.
Pekah, death of, 305.
Peking, Pegolotti on trade of, ii. 234 ;
capital removed to, 240; identified
with Cambalu, 269 ; Gazette, de
scription of, ii. 285.
Pelasgia, Peloponnessus anciently
called, 417.
Pelasgian, where last spoken, 450.
Pelasgians, Niebuhr on, 386 ; traces
of, where found, 417 ; Pelasgians
and Boeotians, legend of quarrel
between, 423.
Penalties for breach included in con
tract, 322 ; natural penalties
on indolence enumerated by
Chinese lawgiver, ii. 51 ; penal
ties against demoralizing bar
barians, 364.
"Pencil of recording officers," ii. 16,
25-
Penestae of Thessaly, 465.
Pentaur, poem of, 133, 175.
People, judgment of the, to be be
lieved, ii. 34.
Pepi II., 6th Dyn., King, 23 ; his
sarcophagus described by Una,
49 ; works the Hammamat
quarries, 95 ; Pyramids of Pepi
I. and IL, 153.
Perfumes, field of flowers for, 345, 346.
Perioeci of Crete, 465.
Periplus on King Charibael, 508 ; on
Malabar region, 546.
Perpetual interest not understood in
China, ii. 329.

INDEX.

537

ersecution of scholars by T'sin
emperor, ii. 104.
Perrot and Chipiez, MM., quoted, 232,
245.
Persian embassies to China, ii. 128-
30 ; Persian Gulf, former exten
sion to the north of, 229, 264 ;
Persian imitations of Chinese
characters, ii. 257.
Personal reserve in China, ii. 3S2.
Peruiartharn, mortgage up to full
market value, 575.
" Perverse," surname given to King-ti
on restoration of Yng-tsong, ii.
243-
Pessinus, pre- Phrygian centre of trade
and worship, 419.
Petition, right of, in China, ii. 376.
Petrie, Mr. Flinders, quotation from,
24-
Petty trading, profits of, in China, ii.
Peyen, general of Kubla, ii. 177.
Pharaoh, his intimacy desired, 48.
Pharaonic succession, rule of, no.
Phasis, 456, 457.
Phebamon, shrine of S., 159.
Philometor, Queen Pythodoris called,
. 439-
Philopator, insurrection against, en
gaged in by women, 221.
Philosophic Taoism, ii. 94.
Phocaeans who founded Massalia,
452.
Phoenicia and Carthage, scanty in
formation about, 384, 385.
Phoenician alphabet, 98 ; language,
385 ; Phoenician "tales and
treaties," 390, 396 ; settlements,
range of, 390, 396 ; guilds or cor
porations, 395 ; trade, character
and staples of, 398, 399; rock
tombs, 405 ; inhumanity, 410 ;
guild of merchants and ship
owners, ii. 339.
Phrases for repudiating contracts,
345-
Physical geography of Central Asia,
ii. 3.
Piankhi, inscription of, 150.
Pictured offerings substituted for real
ones, 153.
Piece of silk, size of, ii. 367 n.
Piece-work preferred by Chinese
operatives, ii. 311
Pien-tsing, or " convenient money," ii.
193-
Pietschmann on Phoenicians, 23.
Pignoratitian contracts, ii. 416, 419.
Pilaski, beyond the Tigris, 289.
Pilgrim's way, 402.

Pin and pocket money promised in
Egyptian marriage contracts, 207,
208 ; Minicoy and Malabar ana-
' logies, 551, 567 ; ii. 473.
Pin, king of Chow, ii. 28.
Ping-chow, centre of monetary unions,
59-
Ping-ti, Han emperor, ii. 120.
Pinto and Perera on Chinese justice,
ii. 264.
Pi-pi of Marquesas Islands, ii. 452.
Pisebkhan, 116.
Planting fig-trees compulsory in
Kabyle tribes, 535.
Plants, temperate and tropical, in
South Arabia, 536.
Plautus, Punic fragments in, 408.
Pledges on security transferable, like
debts, 325.
Pliny on Seres, ii. no n. ; on silk,
m n.
Plots of land, how described in Egypt
ian deeds, 189.
Plough lands of ancient Babylonia,
34o.
Ploughs, respect for property in, 535
and n.
Poh-loh, his management of horses,
ii. 258.
Polemon, Pythodoris succeeds her
husband, 440.
Political effect of Egyptian system of
inheritance, 116 ; political maxims
of Sumer and Akkad, 240 ; politi
cal organization of Malabar, 548 ;
political and economic effects of
Chinese climate, soil, and river
system, ii. 8, 10.
Polo denounces crimes of Achmath
to Kubla, ii. 225.
Polyandry practised in Sparta, 471 ;
obsolescent in Malabar, 551, ii.
466 ; polyandry and entail in
Ladak, 557.
Polybius on Ptolemy's war with Anti-
ochus, 134.
Polygamy, Malabar Commission Re
port on, ii. 465, 466.
Pongal feast in Malabar, 566.
" Poor man come here food," ii. 75.
Population and cultivated area in
Egypt, 72, 80; distribution of,
under Tang Dynasty, ii. 146 ;
under first Sung empire, 168 ;
increase of, in nth and 12th
centuries, 169-71 ; of Hang-chow,
and Peking, 221.
Porcelain under the Tsin and Souy,
ii. 130; of Chi-tsong, 166; under
the Sung, 213 ; under the Ming,
256, 257.

538

INDEX.

Portrait painters, skill of Chinese, ii.
235-
Portrait statue of Gudea, 267.
Portuguese artillery not employed by
the Ming, 268.
Portuguese open trade with China, ii.
261, 263.
Posidonius, religious foundation by,
434-
Possessions, domestic relatives a kind
of, 124.
Postal companies' charges, ii. 341.
Posterior dynasties, ii. 165.
Posthumous betrothals, ii. 70.
Potarras, deep wells with masonry,
446-
Pottery, favourite industry of Shun, ii.
61 ; under first Wei, T'sin and
Souy Dyn., ii. 131 ; of the Ming,
256, 257.
Poultry not domesticated in Egypt, 83.
Pound, variability of, in Chinese
markets, 539, ii. 33S.
Poverty alleged as a reason for selling
land, ii. 358.
Powers of father and mother in
Gortyn code, 478.
Praise of learning, 48, JJ, 104 ; of
riches, ii. in.
Pram the interpreter, Bilingual in
scription of, 429.
Prasos, treaties with, 474.
Pre- or proto-Hellenic population of
Greece, 384.
Pre-alphabetic writing, 5.
Precedence, table of Egyptian, 171.
Precious stones, trade in, ii. 230.
Pre-emption, family right of, barred in
sales of land, 322.
Preimogeneia, Laches son of, 406.
Price of houses in ancient Babylonia,
337 ; of land, ii. 443 ; "a perfect
price," i. 337, 339 ; prices, duty of
government to equalize, ii. 56, 57 ;
regulated by issues of coin, 158 ;
under the Tang, 164 ; rise of,
under the Sung, 199 ; prices and
taxation under the Ming, 264 ; in
modern China, 315,316; not to be
beaten down, 338.
Priest of Sent and Neb-ka, 152.
Priest's name in Egypt connected with
libations, 54 ; priests kept their
own land registers, 140 ; semi-
royal status of priests of Comana,
419 ; income of, whence derived
in Asia Minor, 435.
Priestess of the crown of Neit, title of
wile in 5th Dyn., tomb, 50 ; priest
ess of Bast in Tale of Setnau,
218.

Priesthood, Egyptian, 52, 54 ; concili
ated by Darius and Ptolemy I.,
179-
Priestly families at Lagina and Stra-
tonicaea, 431.
Prime minister of Tang the Success
ful, ii. 18, 31.
Prime'e, Basque term for heiress
daughter, 214.
Primogeniture, 1 1 1 ; importance of, in
Egypt, 131 ; traces of, at Puteoli,
406 ; at Cnidus, 435, 473 ; with
out distinction of sex, Basque rule
of, 46r ; " primogeniture runmad"
among Malayali Brahmins, 554 ;
primogeniture and sister marrying
among Incas, ii. 454.
Princes of imperial family reduced in
number, ii. 132.
Prisoners required to admit their
guilt, ii. 371.
Prisse papyrus, containing precepts of
Ptah-hotep, 43.
Private deeds, showing duration of
generations in Egypt, ii. 407.
Prize essay against eunuchs, ii. 136.
Professions not more highly paid than
trades, ii. 316.
Professor Owen on Egyptian fauna, 19.
Property ceded to the wife to ensure
its passing to children, 113, 115 ;
property in soil and trees distinct,
368 ; of land and buildings ditto,
''• 359 3 property of Rajahs dis*
tributed during their lile, i. 550 ;
property in town and country,
Egyptian, Babylonian and Chi
nese distinction between, ii. 48.
Propriety and humanity, ii. 86 ; pro
priety, rules of, 74, 76.
Protectorate of ministers deposes bad
king, ii. 78.
Protis, chosen by king's daughter
Gyptis, lor her husband, 462.
Proto-Semitic and Hamite stocks, 385.
Provincial governorships, scrupulous
officials banished to, ii. 147 ;
divided, 165.
Psammetichus, iounder of Saite Dyn.,
120 ; vainly relied on for help by
Gyges, 311 ; son of Necho, 313;
revival of Egypt under, 315.
Psar, inkstand of, the beloved of Thoth,
160.
Ptah, the creator, 76 ; title of the high
priest of Ptah, 104.
Ptah-ases, adopted son of Menkara,
169 ; governor of temple domains,
171.
Ptah-hotep, precepts of, 43 ; on the
duty of ministers, 46 ; on honorary

INDEX.

539

sonship, 122 ; "the eldest of his
race," 123 ; his advice to husbands,
201.
Ptah-hotep, scribe represented on his
father's tomb, 50.
Pteria, capital of Cappadocia, 410,
414.
Pterophores or rexiu, 54.
Ptolemies, irrigation works allowed to
decay under the, 76.
Ptolemy Epiphanes, conciliatory po
licy ot, 139 ; Philadelphus, mar
riage contract of his reign, 207 ;
Ptolemy IV., Philopator, payment
of troops by, 134 ; revolt of Egypt
ians against, 134 ; tutelage of
women introduced by, 221.
Public debts of Cyme and Halicar-
nassus, 463 ; public and private
fields in ancient China, ii. 48 ;
public land rented, 127; public
edifices set up in country rather
than towns, 309 ; public works,
laws relating to, 365, 366 ; ex
cessive expenditure on, dis
couraged, 366; monuments, laws
protecting, 372 ; spaces, encroach
ment on, forbidden, 372.
Pudil, father of Rammannirari, 289.
Pulleahs, helots of Malabar, 563.
Pun, land of, 497.
Punicum cicer, from Berber ikiker,
542.
Punt, the land of, 21, 22, 23, 25 ; the
men of, 22 ; identified by Lepsius
with Phoenicians, 23, 385 ; ex
peditions to, 96, 97, 172.
Purchases on credit in Babylonia,
326.
"Purification of the spirits," 144.
Purpose of loans described in con
tracts, 333.
Purpose of the nuraghs, 447.
Purrapurias = Burnaburias, king of
Kardunias, 292.
Purveyors for the palace of Pharaoh,
63-
Puteoli, letter from, to Tyre, 395 ;
Puteoli and Rome, factories
financially united, 396 ; Puteoli
inscription, 406.
Pydnai, fortress of, 428.
Pythodoris, family history of queen,
439-

Qaan petitions to inherit from his
mother's father, 214.
Quarters of Egyptian cities under
special officers, 267.
Queens regent, succession of, 521.

Questions at a Chinese examination,
ii. 380.
Quinsay, see Kinsay.

Ra, the roof of, 76.
Rahnia pledges, or antichretic mort
gage, 187 ; Berber term for, 534 ;
rahnia contract, ii. 418.
Rahotep, modern features of, 25 ; chief
of the Thirty, 56 ; compared to
Gudea, 268.
Rainless regions the seat of earliest
civilizations, 4 ; rainless periods,
effect of, on the soil, ii. 5.
Ramaka Hatasu reigns with her
father, 118 ; invoked in architect's
inscription, 119.
Rameses II. , 40 ; trial in his reign,
60 ; allows the Khita to import
food, 94 ; obtains water for the
gold miners, 97 ; his hereditary
right derived from his mother,
120 ; respects hereditary claims,
132 ; employs mercenaries, 133 ;
campaigns against the Hittites of,
295.
Rameses III., strike at Necropolis,
88 ; foreign expeditions of, 97 ;
woes of the soldier under, 138 ;
wars on the " peoples of the sea,"
295.
Rameses IX., Necropolis workers
appeal to government of, 89 ; state
trial under, 161 ; robbery of royal
tombs under, 165 ; restores a
building of Usurtasen I., 172.
Ramessu-Mei-Amon, city of, 174.
Rammanapaliddin, 296.
Rammannirari, king of Assyria, wars
with Kardunias, 288-9 ; inscrip
tion and genealogy of, 389 ; Ram
mannirari II., son of Asurdanan
I., 297 ; Rammannirari III., his
campaigns and successors, 301 ;
deeds ot his reign, 345.
Ramusio's version ot Marco Polo, ii.
217, 224.
Rank, differences in, between relations,
ii. 295.
Rashideddin on Chinese administra
tion, ii. 231.
Rasutanu or " arranger," functions of,
325-
Rates of wages in ancient Babylonia,
338, 339 ; in modern China, ii.
310-16.
Rations issued to workmen, 88, 89, 96.
Reading priest or Cherheb, 167.
Real property in Malabar only liable
to kanam mortgage, 571.

54°

INDEX.

Real wages, method of estimating rate
of, ii. 314-
Rebel armies in South China, ii. 142.
Reciprocity, Confucius on, ii. 89, 90.
Record office claims privilege, ii. 26.
Recorders of the Interior and Exterior,
ii. 24.
Records of judicial decisions preserved
in Egypt, 190.
Red Hamitic stock, 33 ; red and
black Berbers, 534 ; " Red water"
essential to fertility in Egypt, ii.41 2.
Regency of empress mother of Gin-
tsong, ii. 169.
Registration of inhabitants in Egypt
and China, 127 ; in ancient Egypt,
189 ; of soldiers and sailors, 235 ;
of land sales, 359 ; of households,
361 ; should validate existing
Malabar marriages, ii. 471.
Reigns, average duration of, ii. 405,
406.
Rekba, or vengeance of blood, not to
be claimed before women, 537.
Rekhmara described as a just judge,
60 ; chief of the council of the Six,
61 ; genealogy of, 1 12.
Religion of Upper and Lower Egypt,
172.
Religious order, the whole of China
governed like a, ii. 271 ; religious
toleration under the Mongols, ii.
231.
Rent in Egypt paid for uncultivated
pastures, 78 ; rent and taxation,
130 ; political origin of rent, 131 ;
rent in Babylonia not derived from
land tax, 325 ; rent of houses in
Babylonia, 332 ; rent connected
with rate of interest, 332 ; rent of
corn land, 337 ; proportion be
tween rent and wages, 339 ; how
fixed in Malabar, 570 ; origin of,
in Malabar, 571 ; rent and taxa
tion under the Han, ii. 114 ; land
lord's rent said to exceed imperial
taxes under the Sung, 189 ; rents
and profits, 315 ; rent of Chinese
houses, 381.
Renunciation of a mother sometimes
connected with her remarriage,
328 ; mutual renunciations of
parents and children, husbands
and wives, 362 ; necessary to bar
right to inherit, 363 ; or facilitate
second marriages, 364.
Report of Committee on Malabar
Marriage Act, ii. 459.
Re;riu, or pterophores, 54.
Responsibility of primitive ruler for
food supply, 68.

Resting places for the dead, 68.
Restrictions on marriage, ii. 353, 354.
Retail shops in China, ii. 338, 340.
Revenue of ancient China, ii. 13, 14 ;
Li Ki on revenue and expenditure,
35; accounts of revenue under
the Tang, 135 ; revenue of North
China farmed under Ogotai, 176 ;
revenue reports of Ma-twan-lin,
193 ; of Hang-chow, according to
Marco Polo, 226 ; revenue re
garded as imperial property, 244 ;
under the Ming, 246, 271 ; revenue
of Chinese guilds, 339.
Reverence, Chinese insistence on duty
of, ii. 31.
Revillout, M., on priests engaged in
interments, 164 ; on general
character of Egyptian law, 223 ;
work of the brothers, 321.
Revival of prosperity under the Hans,
ii. 108.
" Revolt," right of Kabyle wives to,
537-
Rhegians of Italy follow laws of
Charondas, 450.
Rhodes, legendary inhabitants of, 441 ;
compared to Carthage, Massalia,
and Cyzicus, 442 ; customs of
modern, 444.
Rhodians keep the peace at sea, 442 ;
Rhodian law of losses at sea, 444.
Rhubarb collected for sick soldiers by
Yeliu tchoutsai, ii. 177.
Ricardian rent not primitive, 131.
Ricci, Matteo, his arrival in China, ii.
266 ; invited to return to his own
country, 268 ; death of, 269, 270.
Rice, amount consumed per head in
China, ii. 35.
Rice wine praised by Marco Polo, ii.
218.
Rich men only gain reputation by
liberality, ii. 334.
Richthofen, Baron v., 15.
"Righteous decisions" of the Chun
Tsew, ii. 25, 489.
Rijam, the Exalted, Minaean king's
title, 502.
Rim-sin, otherwise Ri-agu, son of
Kudur mabug, 260, 280 ; contract
tablets of, 284.
Rimugas, hieratic Babylonian inscrip
tion of, on Bahrein, 516.
Ring money, ii. 58, 59.
Rings, contract to deliver weight ot
silver in, 338.
Rise of Assyria, 291.
Rites and offices, rivalry between
ministers of, ii. 144 ; Book of, on
the poor and propriety, ii. 296.

INDEX.

54i

Rites of Chow, see Chow Li.
Ritti-marduk, grant to, of Karzi jabku,
342.
Ritual, negative confession in, 43 ;
agricultural imagery in, 151 ;
robbery of the dead disclaimed
in, 161.
Rituales Etruscorum Libri, 426.
Rivers of Asia, ii. 4.
Road, " the daughter of the gods,"
238 ; roads, ancient, in Asia
Minor, 419 ; road- ways, inns, and
post-houses in Chow Li, ii. 63 ;
roads, bridges and repairs, laws
on, ii. 372.
"Robber Society" and pawnshops, ii.
33t.
Robbery of tombs, 161, 165.
Roger, Michel, Jesuit missionary, ii.
248.
Roll bearer or cher-heb, 167.
Roman de Ihomme faune, ii. 355.
Roman writers on Seres, ii. no, m.
Ropa, see Erpa.
Routes taken by various coinages, ii.
449-
Royal authority,- how displayed in
Arabia, 522.
" Royal cousins," status of, in Egypt,
48.
" Royal Road," from Susa to Sardis,
412, 416.
Royal Tens and Thirty, 56, 57.
Royal wife takes precedence of royal
mother, no.
Rubruk on Cathayans, ii. 216.
Rules of propriety with regard to sport,
ii. 39-
Runners," full citizens in Crete called,
482.
Running water, charms of, 527.
Russia, embassy from, ii. 274, 275.
Rutennu, land of, pays tribute to
Egypt, 291.

Saba, kings of, 497.
Saba and Raidan, kings of, 502.
Sabaean inscriptions and Sabaean era,
498 ; Sabaean chronology accord-
to Dr. Glaser, 508 ; Saba-an
capital Mariab (Marjab= Mareb),
509 ; Sabaean marriage laws, 523.
Sabako, king of Egypt, encounters
Assyrians at Raphia, 306.
Sabota (Sabwat), capital of Chatro-
motitae, 510.
Sacaea of Athenaeus answers to
festival of Gudea, 244.
Sacred animals, 145-9 i expenditure
on funerals of, 179.

Sacred Edict of Kang-hi, ii. 280, 356,
357 ; on duties of kindred, 379.
Sacred fountain of Panchaea, 514.
" Sacred road " to Delphi, 424.
Sacred tortoise, Chuang-tze and the,
ii. 95.
Sacred way, sixty stadia in length from
city to temple, 419 n.
Sacrifices, list of Gudea's, 247 ; of
sheep by Arabs, 509 ; economy
in, prescribed in China, ii. 36 ;
Ssema-tsien on ancient, 37 ;
animals for, 52 ; Chinese doctrine
of, 282 and n.
Saddle-shaped money, ii. 59.
Sagasaltias, dated by Nabonidus, 282 ;
temple founded by, 289.
Saint Mary the Virgin, church of, how
secularized, ii. 281.
Saite kings, 103.
Saka-kansak, daughter of Tushratta,
2.93-
Salaries of officials in ancient China,
ii. 50 ; under the Tang, 146.
Sales of the right to bury in Egypt,
167, 168 ; Sales, Ninevite formula
for, 182 ; two deeds required for
sales in Egypt, 182 ; sales and
successions taxed in Ptolemaic
Egypt, 190 ; form of sale for real
property, 322 ; sales without
delivery in Babylonia, 326 ; of
land temp. Rimsin, 328 ; sale
with option of redemption, 524 ;
sales of land in China, rules con
cerning, ii. 358.
Salmanasar I., date of, 288 ; son of
Rammannirari, 290.
Salmanasar II., 298, 299.
Salt Lake district, effect of wind in,
ii. 6.
Salt mines, revenue from, ii. 137 ; salt
trade and garrison contracts, 238,
245.
Salting of badly irrigated land in
Egypt, ii. 413.
Saltpetre, manufacture of, forbidden
in Formosa, ii. 363.
Samahali Dirrah, king of Saba, 507.
Samarcand, great mart for Chinese
trade, ii. 260.
Samas, the god, son of Ea, 240.
Samasmudammik, king of Kardunias,
313.
Samas-sumukin made governor of
Babylon, 313 ; deed of his reign,
333-
Sambandhakaran, term, used for hus
band, ii. 465.
Sambandham = connection, ii. 465 ;
sambandham karaina, 474.

542

INDEX.

Sammuramat or Semiramis, 301.
Samoan conception of Mana, 236 ;
Samoan maid of the village,
470.
Samsi, Arabian queen, tributary to
Sargon, 511, 512.
Samsi-iluna, son of Hammurabi, in
scription of, 283 ; contract tablets
of, 284.
Samsi-ramman I., date of, 25a.
Samsi-ramman IV. succeeds Salman
asar 1 1., 33.
Samsu, demotic proper name of god
Thoth="the eldest," 122.
Sana, water supply and citadel of, 505,
507.
Sanch, Egyptian "credit," 209.
Sanctuary, right of, possessed by
women, 436, 461, 537.
Saneha, story of, 72 ; political allusions
in, 119 ; pyramid and endowment
granted to, 157.
Sangar, king of Carchemish, 298.
San-kwo-chi, historical romance of
Three Kingdoms, ii. 124, 479.
Sapi-kalbi, adoption of, 378.
Sar, 255, ii. 434.
Sar and Asur and Ibru- Naharan,
lords of, 500.
Sarakus, last king of Assyria, 314.
Sargon fixes the price of corn and
oil, 246 ; dated from Nabonidus'
tablet, 253 ; date of, if Nabonidus
confused sosses and centuries,
255 ; called "king of the city,"
sc. Agade, 266 ; archaic style of
his monuments, ib. ; comparative
date of Sargon and Gudea, 267 ;
annals or omens of, 275 ; Chinese
parallels to his legend, 276, ii. 19 ;
conquests attributed to, i. 275-7 >
victory over Samaria of, 306 ;
forbearance towards Babylon,
307 ; other conquests, 312 ; ety
mology of name, 308.
Saros cycle, ii. 436.
Sarzec, M. de, quoted, 263.
Satihotep, daughter of Serenput, 124.
Satirical Odes, date of, ii. 24, 26.
Saturnalia, Babylonian counterpart to,
described by Gudea, 224 ; Cretan
and Babylonian equivalent to
Roman, 482.
Savages, laws against adopting the
manners of, ii. 364.
Saving, margin for, in China, ii. 299.
Sayce, Professor, on modern Egyptian
superstitions, 147, 149; do.
honesty, 451.
Sayyid Said, 502.
Sayyidah, Queen, 522, 523.

Scarabs of Thothmes III. and Amen
hotep III. found by Layard, 291,
292.
Scenery, taste for, developed early in
China, ii. 128.
Schall, Adam, Jesuit missionary and
astronomer, ii. 250, 272, 274, 275.
Scharistani, authority for Sabaean
marriage law, 523.
Schiaparelli, Professor, 6th Dyn. in
scription found by, 23.
Scholars restored to favour under the
Han, ii. 105 ; Chinese scholar's
ideal, 148.
School, children sent to, in Egypt,
200 ; schools and colleges in
ancient China, ii. 71,72 ; schools
and examinations under the Tang,
142-4 ; schools and colleges
restored under the Ming, 254,
255 ; schools established by sixth
Inca Rocca, 454.
Schweinfurth, Dr., on sacred trees of
Egypt, 145-
Scribe of the place of provisions,"
title of Amten, 49 ; scribes, posi
tion of, in Egypt, 52 ; compared
with Chinese literati, 53 ; training
school for, 53, 55 ; list of various,
54 ; school exercises of, 54 ;
scribe of the house of instruction,
title of Ptolemaic schoolmaster,
55 ; of the royal storehouses, 62 ;
one of the three classes in Egyp
tian enumeration of mankind, 78 ;
multiply pens and writings, 81 ; a
ministerial, not a ruling class, 87 ;
the young, "has a back," 106;
scribe of the soldiers, of the king,
of the settled inhabitants, 139;
letters of, 174 ; Babylonian
"scribe of births," 342, 379;
scribes employed by king of
Calicut, 564.
Scrupulous honesty of Towareks, 540.
Scyths, Herodotus on dominion of, in
West Asia, 314.
Sea of Central Asia, ii. 3-5.
Sea, " upper " and " lower," in Gudea's
inscriptions, 269, 270.
Se-anch-ka-ra, expedition of, to land
of Punt, 96.
Seang, king of Wei, ii. 28.
Seasons, work for each, in ancient
China, ii. 46-9.
Sebek, 13th Dyn. kings worship the
crocodile-headed, 119.
Sebekemsas, Queen, ii. 406.
Sebek-hotep, 13th Dyn. king, 96.
Sebek-nefer-ra, wife of successor of
last 12th Dyn. king, 119.

INDEX.

543

Second marriage, consent of children,
when necessary to, 208 ; law of
Charondas on, 449; effect of, in
Thesawaleme, 560 ; sometimes
sanctioned in China, ii. 350.
Secret intercourse between betrothed
or married couples, 206, 456, 471.
Secret Prayer or Supplicator, ii. 36.
Secularism and anarchism of Han-yu
and his contemporaries, ii. 153 ;
of Chinese, 216.
Sefi or summer canals, ii. 412.
" Seizing hold " of Ethiopian king by
Amon of Napata, ii. 440.
Self-discipline of Chinese sage, ii. 74.
Se-lou "assassinated" by Tai-tsou-
ming, ii. 239.
Semedo on disuse of carriages in
China, ii. 257.
Semites and Cushites in South Arabia,
19, 20.
Semitic inscription of Dungi, 274.
Senacherib, chronological inscriptions
of, 254 ; recaptures seal of Tiglat-
adar from Babylon, 289,291 ; re
covers Assyrian gods from Baby
lon, 296 ; murderers of, take refuge
in Armenia, 302 ; of Habigal
Dynasty, 306 ; destruction of
Babylon by, 309 ; checked by
resistance of Judah, 312.
Senchus Mor quoted, 135.
Seniors and juniors, ii. 348.
Sent, king of second Egyptian
Dynasty, 42 ; his worship, 152.
Sepharvaim, children sacrificed at,
241.
Sepulture ancient modes of, 25.
Serapeum at Memphis, an asylum
for slaves, 92.
Serat invoked to strangle the first
born, 344.
Serenput, 12th Dyn. tomb of, 124.
Servants and slaves in East Africa,
rights of, 532.
Sesostris, Greek accounts of, 129 ;
pseudo- at Karabeli, 414.
Seti I. associates his son Rameses II.,
120 ; campaigns of, in Syria,
295.
Seti II. supported by the priesthood,
177- . , ,
Setna, or Setnau, demotic tale of, 55,
204 n., 217.
Setten, wife of Serenput, mother and
daughter of do., 124.
Settlement on a wife, 12th Dyn.
Egyptian, 203, 204.
Seuen, drums of Chow attributed to
reign of King, ii. 27 ; Bamboo
annals do., 28.

Seuen, Duke, additional tithe levied by,
ii. 38.
Seuen, king of Tse, ii. 34.
Seuen-king maintains the nature ol
man to be evil, ii. 93.
Seven evil spirits of Babylonian spells,
237 ; seven branches of the
paternal house, 238 ; seven staged
temples raised on "holy mound,"
238.
Seventh century B.C., rise of new
nationalities in, 310.
Seventy great scholars, ii. 102.
Sewage, collection of town, ii. 317.
Sexagenary cycle of China, ii. 29, 434.
Sexagesimal notation, antiquity of,
247 ; used by Assurbanipal, 254 ;
in Vannic inscriptions, 303 ; traces
of, in Malabar and Minicoy, 547 ;
origin of, ii. 434, 435.
Sexes eat apart in Canary isles, 542.
Shah Rukh, embassy to China of, ii.
241, 260.
Shalmaneser or Ululai, son of Pul,
306.
Shamanistic side of Babylonian re
ligion, 235.
Shang, dynasty of, ii. 18, 28, 29, 101.
Shanghai, recovery from destruction
of, ii. 379.
Shardana and Sardinians, 445.
Sharganisharali = Sargon, king of the
city, 256.
Sheikh el Beled, wooden statue so-
called, 25, 103 ; compared to
Gudea, 268.
Shensi formerly included Kansu, 18.
Shepherds, expulsion of, 120.
Shi-king, young lady in, appeals to
Mr. Chung, ii. 43 ; Shi and Shoo,
128 ; destruction of, advocated,
104 ; Chinese scholar on missing
portions of, 479 ; see also Odes.
Shing-too, emperor known as Kang-hi,
ii. 275.
Shinnung, mythical Chinese emperor,
31, ii. 19.
Shishak, 22nd Dyn. king of Egypt,
116, 296.
Shishaks and Sargons reigning in
Egypt, 192 ; naturalized Egyp
tians, 316.
Shoo King, book of history, ii. 11, 16-
18, 22-4, 30, 31, 54, 58, 475, 476.
Short reigns, averages much affected
by, ii. 407.
" Show face " festivals, 179.
Shu-anna, a quarter of Babylon, 284.
Shun, emperor of China, ii. 17-9, 21,
29, 30, 61 ; quoted by literary
maid-servant, 296.

544

INDEX.

Shun-chi, first Mantchu emperor of
China, ii. 274.
Shuo-wen, ii. 28.
Sibou, the erpa of the gods, 117.
Sidon = fishery, 389 ; Sidon and
Aradus, walls of, 405.
Sidonian kings, 406.
Sidyma, mother's name mentioned
alone in late inscription of, 435.
Sieou, two sisters, artists in pottery,
ii. 270.
Sieuen-tsong-ming, ii. 241.
Signatures, phrases concerning, 342.
Silk and rice, allowance of, to wives in
Minicoy, 567.
Silk used for currency, ii. 51 ; silk
and grain, used for exchange,
157-9 ; use of, forbidden, 161.
Silk-weavers and dyers' union, ii. 319.
Silk- weaving factory, wages in, ii. 312.
Silkworm month, ii. 47.
Silsilis, breaking of rock dam at, 80.
Silver and corn, medium of exchange
in Egypt, 197 ; silver, Phoenician
trade in, 400 ; used for trade, ii.
254 ; as medium of exchange,
270 ; relation of, to copper in
Egypt, 445, 447-
Simeonites, Meunites destroyed by,
499-
Simon, M. Eugene, and the Wang
family, ii. 298 ff.
Simtishilshak, father of Kudur-mabug,
279.
Sin, the moon god, patron of Ur, 272.
Sinabich, ancient Dalisandros, inscrip
tion from, 434.
Sinazu buys land, 328.
Sinbelsaan buys part of his brother's
inherited Jand, 328.
Singan-fu, the western court, ii. 106.
Singashid, inscription of, 273.
Sin-idinna, king of Sumer and Akkad,
civilized inscription of, 278.
Sinik, country of the Seni or Chinese,
ii. 149 n.
Sininana or Sini-istar, party to con
tracts, 328 ; swears disputed pro
perty was bought from personal,
not joint funds, 329 ; sum total of
transactions attributed to, 330 ;
lawsuit with son of Ubarsin, 338.
Sinmuballit, father of Hammurabi,
283.
Sippara, capital of Akkad, 265 ; Sip-
para, Nipur, and Babylon, their
worship ordered and captives re
stored by Sargon, 308, 309 ; taken
by Cyrus, 319.
Sir Thomas More excludes horses
from Utopia, ii. 257.

Sirgulla, 230 ; various readings for,
239 ; a city of Sumer, 264.
Sirius, rising of, ii. 438.
Sirwah and Mareb, departed greatness
of, 498 ; temple to Almakah at
Sirwah, 506.
Sisku, second Babylonian dynasty,
258, 284.
Sister marrying in Egypt, no, m ;
of the Tachtadschys, 438,439 ; in
Canary Isles, 542 ; in Peru, ii
454-
Sister's son's inheritance called Maru-
makatayam, 550 ff., ii. 458 ff.
Six Boards of administration in ancient
China, ii. 23 n. ; described by
Rashideddin, 231 ; a Mantchu
and Chinese appointed to each
office of, 274 ; Boards of modern
China, 376.
Six great houses of ancient Egypt,
61, ii. 445.
Six hundred Annunaki, 233 ; 600 of
the country, chief of, 342 ;
councils of 600, 424 ; Six Hun
dreds of Malabar and. Massalia,
453, 547-
Six minor dynasties, ii. 124.
Six witnesses to sale of land in Mala
bar, 547, 575 ; sixth share of pro
duce paid to police, ib. ; six
virtues, six actions, six branches
of knowledge, ii. 72 ; six tablets
outside courts of justice, ii. 376.
Sixteen witnesses to grant of Ada's
land, 344 ; to private deed, 347.
Sixth Babylonian Dyn., 299.
Sixths of a mina counted as fractions,
not shekels, 375 n.
Sixty, council of, at Cnidus, 473 ;
" Sixty Houses," the, mentioned
in inscription of Entemena, 263,
342, 547 ; sixty measures, between
city of Nask and divine images,
506 ; sixty, body of, formed at
Athens of 9 archons and 51'
epheti, 42 1.
Si-yu-ki, Hiouen-thsang's Memoirs on
western countries, ii. 145.
Skuptschina, ministerial responsibility
enforced by Servian, 475 n.
Slave in Egypt consents to his own
sale, 91 ; slave carried off to serve
in army, 93 ; slave-dealing of
Phoenicians, 400.
Slavery in Egypt, 90-3 ; in China, ii.
114.
Slaves, right to bury, 168 ; prices of,
in Babylonia, 340 ; contract for
sale of, 345 ; deeds signed by,
355 ; compensation for injury to,

INDEX.

545

358 ; agricultural, at Rome, 409 ;
not employed by Locrians or
Phocians, 448 ; Gortyn code on,
476-7 ; forbidden to plead by
Syro-Roman code, 489 ; not used
among Nabateans, 512 ; slaves
of Towareks do not revolt, 540 ;
given as dowries in Ceylon and
Babylonia, 562 ; duties and rights
of, in Ceylon, 562 ; slaves of
Buddhist monasteries set free,
ii. 149 ; families of, not to be
separated, 353.
Small proprietorship, working of, in
China, ii. 304, 305.
Soanes, ancient and modern, 422.
Soap-stone mines near Wenchow, ii.
3'4-
Social ideal of Chinese, ii. 330.
Social marriages of Malabar, plea for
legalization of, ii. 469.
Societdde la Sainte Enfance, ii. 377, 3 78.
Sofala, gold mines of, 519 and n.
Sohar, Arab vessels from, trade with
China, 520.
Soils of special fertility, ii. 7.
Sokarimsef, pyramid of, 153.
Sokaris, Ptah-ases governor of the
temple of, 169.
Sokotra, island of, identified with
Panchaea, 517 ; position of
women in, 542.
Solar diameter as unit of measure
ment, ii. 435.
Solar temples of Egypt, orientation
of, ii. 438, 439 ; solar festivals in
Peru, 454.
Soldiers' lands, tenure of, in Egypt,
130; hardships of, 138; Chinese
soldiers' laments for family and
home, ii. 66, 67 ; double pay of,
.134,3"-
So-ling, his loan to small traders, ii.
326, 330, 333.
Solstitial and equinoctial solar cults,
ii. 438, 439-
Solstitial temple at Zimbabwe, 519.
Son. .."who established the foundation
of his father's throne," 286.
Son-in-law, adoption of, ii. 68.
Song of the Harper, 71, 119 n.
Songhay, care for the dead by, 538.
Son's wife, girl bought to be a, 348.
Sophists in China, age of, ii. 87.
Sosses and ners, reckoning by, 255,
ii. 434.
Sothic period, ii. 437.
Southern China, foreign trade with,
restored, ii. 234, 236 ; heavily taxed
by Ming emp., 240 ; slowest to
submit to Mantchus, 274.
VOL. II. — P.C,

Southern empire of the Sung pros
perous, ii. 175 ; great college of,
21 1.
Souy Dyn., ii. 130, 131 ; currency re
forms of, 1 58.
Spade money, ii. 58, 59.
Spanish ships and Sir George Anson,
ii. 288.
Spartan banquets described by Athen-
aeus, counterpart to Samoan
taupo, 470 ; custom of secret
marriage, 471, 493 ; peculiar
position of Spartan women, 483 ;
Spartan lots reckoned to support
three men, 558.
Specialists not always impartial, 23.
Speculation in paper money, ii. 253.
Spirits, worship of, in Egypt, 144 ;
of the land and the grain wor
shipped in China, 153, ii. 485 ;
recognised in primitive Chaldaea,
233 ; spirit of the city deified,
269 ; of heaven and earth, adora
tion of, 278; "Spiritual Exercises"
of S. Ignatius, parallel to, 420.
Sport, animals available for, ii. 374.
Ssema-kwang, ii. 180 ; his history,
188 ; funeral of, 189.
Ssema-tching, historian, ii. 144.
Ssema-tsien, chronology of, ii. 29 ; on
fong and chan sacrifices, 36, 107 ;
on ancient metals, 58 ; T'sin
inscription preserved by, 101 ;
record of debate on destruction
of the books, 102-4 ; on Han
campaigns in Central Asia, 109 ;
on sequence of prosperity and
decay, 123, 252 ; Historical re
cords of, 478.
Staff, use of, 517, 542 ; in China, ii.
77 ; in Egypt, etc., ii. 497, 498.
Standard of comfort among Egyptian
labourers, 89.
Standard of weight and length fixed
concurrently, ii. 433.
Stars, Egyptian temples oriented to,
ii- 439> 44o.
State purchases, coin put in circula
tion by, ii. 59.
Statue erected and named by Gudea,
243, 244.
Statuettes of Myrina, modern char
acter of, 463.
Status of Egyptian king consort, no.
Statute of limitation applies not to
Welsh mortgages, ii. 420.
Staunton, Sir George, on Constitution
of China, ii. 291.
Stele of the Coronation, 530.
Sterlo= Basque cadet, 461.
Steward of the house of books; 55.
N N

54^

INDEX.

Stewards, administration through, in
Egypt, 83, 85.
Stock, giving and taking, in Irish
laws, 135.
Stone-cutters of Amenemhat III.,
no.
Stone drums of Chow, ii. 27.
Stone knives used for sacrificial pur
poses in Egypt, 54.
Story of the Peasant, 42, 58, 86 ; of
Saneha, 72.
Strabo's maternal ancestry, 439.
Streets, names of Chinese, ii. 340.
" Stretching the cord" to orient Egyp
tian temples, ii. 440.
Strike of workmen in the Necropolis,
88, 89 ; of Chinese pork-butchers
against a tax, ii. 375.
" Stubble before the wind," ii. 6.
Students in state colleges privileged
in examinations, ii. 210.
Suanes, villages of, lie in clusters,
459-
Subbi-kuzki, king, a correspondent of
Amenhotep IV., 294.
Sub-registrar not acceptable as mar
riage high priest, ii. 468.
Subsistence wages and forced labour,
67, 68.
Subterranean irrigation canals in Peru,
ii. 454.
Succession to the throne in ancient
China, ii. 55
Su-che, his opposition to Wang-ngan-
shi, ii. 182, 186, 188 ; governor of
Hang-chow, 200; Lake Si-hou
planted by, 201 ; epigrams of,
201 ; appointed historiographer,
and banished, 202.
Su-chow, rents reduced and granaries
opened at, ii. 242.
Suedin, peoples "east" of Babylonia,
265.
Suffeti, election of Carthaginian, 393.
Suffixes of Pelasgian names, 418.
Suhi, king of, on the Euphrates, 298.
Suicide clubs among Chinese girls, ii.
355-
Sumer= Southern Babylonia, 264.
Sumer and Akkad, difference between,
264 ; title of ldng of, 274 ; separ
ation of cities of, 279.
Sumerian and Egyptian writing, 234 ;
Sumerian - Semitic vocabularies,
324-
Sumerians and Semites contrasted,
274, 275.
Summer canals, drawbacks of deep,
in Egypt, ii. 412.
Summer palace, China indifferent to
the looting of a, ii. 383.

Sumula-ilu built fortresses against Ela
mites, 283.
Sun, wife compared to the, 238.
Sung Dynasty, causes of its fall, ii.
180.
Sung emperor has inscriptions on
Chow drums filled with gold, ii.
27.
Surety, only relatives can stand, 327,
33*-i-
Surname, law against marriage be
tween persons of the same, ii.
352.
Sum fortress, 298.
Suspension bridge in Yunnan, ii. 342.
Suti, nomad tribes, smitten by Sargon,
309-
Sutu, Kutu and Lullubu to be de
stroyed by Akkad, 285.
Su-tung p'o, verses on rain, ii. 76 ; his
estimate of wealth, 199; opposi
tion to foreign trade, 215.
Sybaris, tombs at, used as asylums
448.
Syllabaries compared with telegraphic
code-words, 339.
Symposium, Socrates compared to
Silenus' figures in, 464.
Synchronous history of Babylonia
and Assyria, 288 ; story of, re
sumed, 297.
Syria and Palestine, allegiance of
transferred to Egypt, 314.
Syria, Egyptian trade with, 97, 98.
Syrian law of half-profits and risks,
444-
Syrian slave, letters of Egyptian
scribe concerning, 174.
Syro-Cappadocian monuments, 427.
Syro-Roman law book, 487-495.
Sz'chuen, enlightened governor of, ii.
'34-
Tablet of usu stone, royal inscription
copied from, 273.
Tabulu,the shepherd beloved of Istar,
250.
Tachtadschys, archaic people in Caria
and Lycia, 438.
Tafidh, perhaps Sana, 507.
Tai'i, Prince of M't Tso, sacrifice to,
ii- 37-
Tai-tsong, stock name for second ruler
of a Dynasty, ii. 37.
Tai-tsong-Tang, second emperor of
Tang Dynasty, improper curiosity
shown by, ii. 26 ; drums of Chow-
found in reign of, 27 : accession
of, 131, 133; number of students
under, 143 ; salaries of officials
under, 146; granaries under, 184.

INDEX.

547

Tai-tsong-sung, second emperor of
Sung Dynasty, ii. 168.
Tai-tsou = great ancestor, founder of
a Dynasty, ii. 237.
Tai-tsou and Tai-tsong-tsing, ii. 274.
Tai-tsou-ming, ii. 237, 239 ; coinage
of, 253.
Tai-tsou-sung, centralizing measures
of, ii. 167 ; reunites the empire,
168 ; his reign begins brilliant
period of Dynasty, 180.
Taiz, pre- Islamite remains at, 505.
"Taking the hands of Bel," 319, ii.
440.
Talai lama, friendship with, ii. 267,
268.
Talayots of Balearic Isles, 446.
Tale of Two Brothers, 79 ; of Setna,
M. Revillout's translation of,
204.
Tali-kettu-kalyanam, tying of tali, ii.
474-
Talmud, Babylonian, on ten measures
—of poverty, etc., 353.
Tamara, Queen, 458.
Tamerlane, ravages ot, ii. 260.
Tamna or Thomna, capital ot Katta-
banians, 509.
Tana (Azov), route to China from, ii.
233-
Tanagra, pottery at, 464.
Tan-foo, Duke, removes from Pin to
Chow, ii. 19, 20.
Tang, see Thang the Successful.
Tang Dynasty, rise and fall of, ii. no,
138 ; Tang code dravvn up, 132 ;
official history of, 202.
Tang-ja-wang = Adam Schall, ii. 250.
Tangut, people of, ii. 217; language
of, learnt by Chinese, 279.
Taoism, ii. 145, 146 ; favoured by
-Hiouen-tsong, ii. 144.
Taoist criticisms on Confucius, ii. 84 ;
Taoist jealousy of Buddhism, 124 ;
insurrection in Sz'chuen, 288.
Ta-ouan, Han expedition against, ii.
109.
Tar, Egyptian border fortress in
Minaean inscriptions, 500.
Tara, unit of civil organization in
Malabar, 547, 548.
Taraivaram of ground duty of Jaffna
Malabars, 569.
Taravad, see Tarwad.
Tarchundarash, king of Arzapi,
? Reseph, 294.
Taricheutes or parachistes, 164, 166 :
proprietary institutions of, 167,
168.
Taririas, mother of Armenian king,
Menuas, 303.

Tarwad, tarawad or taravad, des
cription of system, 552 ff. ; tarwad
system partly answerable for
kanam tenure, 575 ; tarwad
claims like those of epiballontes,
576 ; not lawful to marry any
member of deceased wife's tar
wad, ii. 469 ; tarwad rights, how
far to be protected, 472, 473 ;
claim of tarwad to share self-
acquisitions, 473.
Tatar aggressions on Chinese fron
tiers, ii. 133, 134 ; Tatars of all
sorts adopt Chinese civilization,
173; costly embassies of, 242,
243 ; little wars with, 286.
Ta-Tsin (Rome), projected Chinese em
bassy to, ii. 117 ; religion of, 149.
Tau-kwang, recent Tsing emperor, ii.
289.
Tavali, see Tavazhi, branch family in
Malabar, 552.
Tavazhi or tavali, action of English
courts in regard to, ii. 461 ; claims
of, to share self-acquisitions, 473.
Tave, the servant of, renounces his
master, 92.
Tavium, sacred grove and place of
refuge at, 420.
Taxation and finance, officials con
nected with Egyptian, 63 ; tax
ation in Egypt fluctuates with
the inundation, 69 ; taxation and
rent, 130 ; taxation in ancient
China, ii. 35-9, 41 ; taxation and
revenue under the Han, 11 3-6,
121, 127 ; taxation and population
under the Sung, 192 ; under the
Mongols, 227, 228 ; under the
Ming, 239 ; of foreigners in Cash
gar, etc., 287 ; rate of, per head in
modern China, 329, 374.
Taxes, large land-owners offer to pay,
for their dependents, ii. 150 ;
taxes remitted in bad times, 360.
Taxpayers not to be overcharged, ii.
365-
Tchang, brothers, artists in porcelain,
ii. 213 ; the elder imitated under
the Ming, 256, 257.
Tchang yang, negotiable notes in
vented by, ii. 193.
Tchao-ing defends the legal rate of
interest, ii. 328.
Tcheng-ki-tong, results of residence
in Europe to, ii. 337.
Tche-tsong, Sung emperor, ii. 171 ;
regulations of Wang-ngan-shi re
vived by, 202, 207.
Tchin-tse on social utility of million
aires, ii. 326.

548

INDEX.

Tchin-tsong, Sung emperor, ii. 168.
Tching-tsong, Chinese name of
Timour, ii. 229.
Tching y, master of the orthodox
school, ii. 206-8.
Tchu-wen, general, puts last Tang
emperor to death, ii. 158.
Tea, introduction of, ii. 130 ; not men
tioned by Marco Polo, 218; tea
trade, opening of Tatary to, 238 ;
Tea and silk dealers' guilds, 338 ;
charitable provision of, 378.
Teacher paid by Kabyle villages,
536.
Tea-pickers, wages of, 313.
Tedjaris, mountains of, 232.
Tefinagh or 'tifinar,' old Berber cha
racters called, 540.
Tegean inscription, 438.
Teie or Tii, wife of Amenhotep III.,
129 ; mother of Amenhotep IV.,
293-
Teih, the barbarous, ii. 364.
Teleboas, daughter of Lelex, 417.
Tell el Amarna tablets, cuneiform cor
respondence between Egypt and
princes of Asia, 251, 288, 291 ;
bibliography of, 295 n.
Telloh, inscriptions of, tr. by Amiaud,
239 ; remains of Lagash (Sir-
gulla) at, 263.
Telmessus, oracle of Apollo at, 434.
Teman, wisdom of, 500.
Temperament of Egyptians and
Chinese, 223.
Temple employees in Egypt, lists of,
64, 99 ; " Temple days " of the
priests valued and bequeathed,
158 ; revenues so described, 173 ;
Babylonian parallels to, 376 ;
temples of the kings, endow
ment of, 179 ; royal gifts to, 171,
172; lands included in, 173;
taxes assigned to, 176, 177 ; re
venues received by, under Rame
ses III., 176 ; temple estates held
upon trust, 173 ; gradual increase
of, in Egypt, 175 ; temple lands
granted to Greek mercenaries,
134 ; temple endowments taxed
under Ptolemies, 179 ; Baby
lonian temples lend free of in
terest, 332 ; temple feasts at
expense of priests in Caria, 432 ;
temple of emperors and kings in
China, ii. 256.
Ten measures of wisdom, etc., accord
ing to Talmud, 353 ; ten years
? normal term for antichretic mort
gages or leases, 354 ; tens and
threes in Doric states, 42 1 ; tens

and thirties in Carthage, 394 ; ten,
groups of, in Malabar, etc., 547,
548.
Tenants in Malabar, theoretically hold
at will, 575 ; twelve years' tenure
secured by English courts, ib.
Teng T'ung, Chinese Croesus, ii. 156.
Tenos inscription respecting sales and
mortgages, 437, 453.
Tenth of a man's property dedicated
to Serapis, 176; "tenth year,"
amount of debt in the, 354.
Terminations of Kassite and Vannic
names, 303 ; Pelasgian do.,
418 ; as and is in Isaurian in
scriptions, 434.
Teti, pyramid of, 153.
Te-tsong, Tang emperor, ii. 151 ; con
versation with a peasant of, 152.
Thai-hio, imperial college, founded, ii.
118.
Thamaount, Kabyle institution called,
469.
Thang, the successful, founder of the
dynasty of Shang, ii. 18, 28, 31,
57, 92 ; inscription on his bath,
74-
Thapsus, a Tyrian colony, 406.
Tharros necropolis, 401, 405.
Theatrical performances in Dravidian
villages, 566 ; theatrical company,
pay of Chinese, 310 ; demeanour
of audience, 382.
Theban priesthood, aggrandisement
of, under Rameses III., 177.
Thebes, Memphis and Heliopolis,
judges and high priests of, 171 ;
chief priesthood of Thebes, 171 ;
capital transferred, increase in
religious importance of, 172.
Theophrastus' name for lapis-lazuli,
232 ; on laws of Charondas, 449.
Thera, inscription found at, reserves
rights of daughters' descendants,
435-
Thesawaleme or Tasawalamai, Ceylon
law book, 559.
Thessalian tribes with Amphictyonic
franchise, 465.
Thimecheret or division of meat in
Algeria, 469, 435 ; Guanche par
allel to, 543.
Third Dyn. Egyptian kings, 42 ;
third Chinese Dyn., fall of, ii. 97.
Third year, land let for crop of, 334 ;
third part of crop given to land
lord by Ceylon custom, 569.
Thirteenth (Egyptian) Dyn. kings reign
in right of their wives, 119 ; king
described as "son of queen mother
Kema," 119.

INDEX.

549

Thirty judges or suteni in Egypt, 56 ;
thirty years' jubilee in Assyria and
Egypt, 300; Thirty, councils of,
472-4 ; thirty gerontes of Sparta,
. 472, 473-
This, capital of ist Egyptian Dyn., 19.
Thoth, Egyptian table of precedence
ascribed to god, 64 ; the register
ing god, 76 ; called faint', 122 ;
wisdom of, stolen by Setnau, 218.
Thothmes, a litigant, 86.
Thothmes I., son of Nofert-ari-Aahmes,
sometimes represented black, 120 ;
conquests and tributes claimed by,
291 ; marriages of the four Thoth
mes, no, 118.
Thothmes III., reign of, 40 ; employ
ment of his prisoners, 90 ; spoil
taken by, 97 ; inscription of, 101 ;
his ornamental tools, 103 ; con
quests and tributes claimed by,
291 ; Thothmes III. and the
ahouitou of Megiddo, 140 ; his
gifts to temples, 172, 173, 175 ;
empire extended to borders of
Babylon, 287 ; Mimmuria of Tell
el Amarna letters, 293 ; dated
astronomically, ii. 438.
Three hundred Igigi, 233 ; three years,
leases for, 334 ; " three parts he
made" at the time of cultivation,
335 ; threefold classifications in
Asia Minor, 421 ; threes and tens
in Doric states, 421 ; three cities
of ancient Rhodes, 441 ; three
grades of population, 465 ; three
hundred, senates of, 472 ; three
possible arrangements for house
hold life, 493 ; three classes on
island of Panchaea, 514; "three
precious things " of Arab, 528 ;
three dynasties of ancient China,
ii. 22, 29 ; allotments of, 44 ; three
years' mourning, when used, 70 ;
three kingdoms, period of, 124 ;
three hundred per cent, profits of
trade, 334.
Thsi yu on hereditary occupation,
ii. 54.
Thurium, city of, divided into four
quarters, 421.
Thyrea, city walls of, 486.
Ti, description of wall pictures on the
grave of, 66 ; on his dead wife, 199.
Tibet, Chinese difficulties with, ii. 133,
'34, 139 > first mention of, in Chi
nese annals, 139 ; Tibet applies
for Chinese protection, 279.
Tibetan explanation of Basque rule
against marriages between elder
children, 558.

Tien or contract, Chinese mortgage
called, 184; Amyot's description
of, 184, 185.
Tien-tchi on interest and rent, ii. 328.
Tien-tsin massacre, causes of, ii. 378.
Tiglat-adar, his seal captured and re
covered, 254 ; son of Salmanasar
1., 291.
Tiglath-pileser I., king of Assyria,
254 ; inscription of, 254 ; denun
ciation of "unseen places" by
290, 291 ; wars with Mardukna-
dinahi, 296.
Tiglath-pileser III., ? a Babylonian
named Pulu, 304.
Tigris, floods of, 229.
Tii or Teie, mother of Amenhotep IV.,
293-
Time book of Egyptian foreman, 70.
Timit, later Egyptian word for town,
39-
Timour (Tchingtsong), ii. 229.
Timuchi of Massalia, 424, 449, 452,
547-
Tintir, sacred name of Babel, 262 ;
ist Babylonian Dyn. called of.
284.
Tinu, dynasty of, 306.
Tirhaka unites Egypt and Ethiopia,
312 ; recovers Memphis from
Necho, 313.
Tiruvalluvar, author of Kural, 566.
Tiryns, walls of, 405.
Tithe, the Li Ki on, ii. 36.
Tiuspa, ? Teispes, the Achaemenian
3H-
TIos, acropolis of, 428.
" To bedauie," Bedja or Bega lan
guage, 53 '¦
Token coinage, Chinese approximation
to a, ii. 157.
Toleration edict of Kang-hi, ii. 276,
281.
Tomb, lands or domain of the, 152 ;
not to be built on private or temple
lands, 161 ; as property in Egypt,
163 ; property in, in Caria and
Lycia, 433 ; burial of valuables
in, ii. 115; litigation respecting
the sites of, ii. 359.
Tones, use of Chinese, not at first un
derstood by Europeans, ii. 267.
Tong-kien-kang-mou, ii. 479.
Topogrammats, 139.
Tortoise shell, divination by, in China,
"•37- . . . ,_, .
Total abstinence societies in China,
ii. 380.
Totemism, no signs of, in Egypt, 145,
147.
Touiza, Kabyle labour loans, 187.

55°

INDEX.

Tourguts cross Chinese frontier, ii.
287.
Tou-tsong, Sung emperor, ii. 177.
Towarek laws of inheritance, 524 ;
Towarek tribes, position of women
among, 539 ; functions of noble
or warlike, 539, 540.
Town, "a righteous man who loves
his," 245 n. ; "town and country,
all my property in," a Babylonian
formula, 324 ; independence of
towns in feudal China, ii. 60.
Trade organizations in later Egypt,
107 ; trades occupy special
quarters in Egyptian towns,
109 ; trade routes from Euph
rates to Mediterranean, 389 ;
trade routes for tin and amber,
401, 402 ; for Milesian trade with
Etruria, 424 ; from the Black
Sea, 426 ; to China, ii. 140 ;
trade guilds, ii. 318-30 ; all
classes interested in trade, 325 ;
trade with barbarians, laws on,
363-
"Traders," name of Shang Dynasty
translated, ii. 29.
Trading class, status of, in China, ii.
323, 334 ; trading tribes of South
Arabia, i. 503.
Translators, two schools of, 320.
Travancore, history of, by Mr. Shun-
goony Menon, 554.
Travellers, provision for, in Malabar,
564.
Treasury bonds or fey tsien, ii. 163.
Treaties between Carthage and Rome,
396 ; between Cretan towns, 474,
475 ; between China and the Leao,
ii. 169 ; treaty on equal terms
between China and the Kin, ii.
172 ; between Kubla and the
Sung, 177.
Trees planted on other men's land,
568, 569.
Triad, divine and human family, 121 ;
domestic Egyptian, 203 ; of Car
thaginian oaths, 410 ; favourite
Chinese, ii. 3.
Tribute bearers, expense caused by
reception of, ii. no; so called,
241 ; tribute-paying families, pro
portion of, 168.
Tribute of Yu, ancient portion of Shoo
King, 18, 32, ii. n, 13, 17,21.
Trigault on written character of China,
ii. 264 ; his book on Ricci's
mission, 267.
Tripolis, Phoenician settlements
called, 394.
Troops" of young men in Crete, 471.

Truddhu or watch-towers in Apulia,
447-
Truth, Egyptian conception of, 44.
Tryphaena, daughter of Pythodoris,
440.
Tsao, state of, ii. 97.
Tse, signs of the fall of, ii. 40 ; prince
of, 83 ; scholar of, opposed to
flatterers of T'sin emperor, 102.
Tseng-kong superseded as historio
grapher by Su-che, ii. 202.
Tseou, clan of workers in porcelain, ii.
213.
Tse-tchi-tong-kien-kang-mou, history
by Ssema-kwang, ii. 188.
Tsi, see Tse.
Tsien-tchi on free trade and diminish
ing returns, ii. 325.
T'sin, state of, ii. 24 ; persons buried
with duke of, 80 ; imperial terri
tory ceded to, 81 ; usurpation of,
97, 100 ; character of, 102, 103 ;
T'sin Dynasty, ten follies of, 105 ;
duration of, 130.
Tsin-chi-hwang-ti, Burner of the
Books, ii. 100, 106.
Tsing, Chinese rural unit, 38 ; village
settlement with common well, ii.
42 ; "imperial fields," ii. 116.
Tsing, speech of, ii. 102.
Tsing-ti or promissory notes, ii. 193.
Tsin-sse, duties of the first three, or
doctors, ii. 255.
Tso Chuen, Commentary by Tso on
Chun Tsew, ii. 25 ; quoted, ii.
40, 54, 99, 102.
Tsoo, human sacrifices in state of, 11.
80.
Tsoui, pottery of the venerable, ii.256.
Tuition fees under the Sung, ii. 143 ;
in modern China, 311.
Tung-chi, recent Tsing emperor, ii.
289.
Turano-Scythic group of languages,
ii. 490.
Tushratta, letters from, 293.
Tutelage of women, objection to in
troducing in Malabar, ii. 471, 472.
Twelfth Dyn. stele, 79 ; kings of,
associate sons in government,
119; reward of gallantry under,
131 ; extra share of one-twelfth
taken by eldest son, 217.
Twelve Pastors of Chinese tradition.
32, ii. 21 ; twelve shekels per
mina, interest at the rate of, 334 ;
twelve per soss= 20 per cent, 334,
335 ; twelve witnesses to Ritti-
Marduk's grant, 343 ; twelve cities
of Etruscan federation, 424 ;
council of, in Gran Canaria, 542.

INDEX.

55'

Twenty-fifth Ethiopian Dyn., 190.
Twenty-first Dyn. founded by usurpa
tion of Hirhor, 178 ; influence of
priesthood declines after, 192.
Twenty-second Egyptian Dyn., As
syrian contemporaries of, 296.
Twenty-sixth (Saite) Dyn., 120 ; anti
quarian renaissance under, 253.
Twenty-three histories, ii. 478.
Twins of the Serapeum, 220.
Tvvo Brothers, tale of, 79.
Two Crowns associated with tvvo
astronomical systems, ii. 43S.
Two families, difficulties arising from
hereditary rights of, 216.
Two literary young ladies, romance
of, ii. 295.
Tyana, horse breeding and sacred
spring at, 419.
Tylor, Mr., quoted, 231.
Tyre refuses tribute to Assyria, 312 ;
Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus, con
federation of, 394 ; height of
houses at, 406 ; fresh - water
springs at sea off, 515 ; Tyre
(or Tylos) and Aradus, islands in
Persian Gulf, so called, 516.
Tyrian Herakles, patron of Phoenician
guild, 395 n., 508 ; Tyrian seas,
dangers of, 307, 308.
Tyrrhenian license according to
Athenaeus, 448.

Uahabra (Pharaoh Hophra) = Apries,
317-
Ubarsin engaged in sales and parti
tions of land, 328, 33 1 .
Ugnu or Uknustone=lapis-lazuli,250.
Uigour poem, Kudatku Bilik, ii. 215.
Ululai, ? the personal name of Sama-
nasar, 306.
Ummanigas, king of Elam, 307.
Umpire city (ekkletos), institution of,
475-
Un, nomarch of, 40.
Una, Sixth Dyn., inscription ot, 49 ;
office held by, 46 ; he has access
to the House of the Six, 61.
Unas' pyramid, plummet found in,
103 ; funeral text found in, 153 n.
Uncultivated land, ownership of,
lapsed in Egypt, 141 ; law of, in
Arabia, 525, 526 ; taxed in ancient
China, ii. 50 ; in modern, 236 ;
granted afresh by the State, 357,
362.
Undaruti panayam=vivum vadium,
, 571.
Underground water channels, 422, 526,
527, 'i- 454-

Underselling and overcharging, the
Yi King on, ii. 489.
" Undivided half," 361.
Uniformity of costume, ii. 64.
Unit of French metric system, ii. 433.
Unlawful to deprive a neighbour of
his business, ii. 368.
"Unnamed prince," exalted title of,
ii. 211.
Unploughed fields, forming pasture,
78.
Unpopular officials repudiated, 88.
Upper and Lower Egypt, division of
the country into, 37.
Upper Egypt, proposals for irrigation
of, ii. 415.
Ur, 230 ; a city of Sumer, 264 ; mod
ern Mugheir, 271.
Urardhi, modern Armenia, 298.
Ur-bau, patesi, inscription concerning,
240 ; otherwise, Ur - bagas or
Urukh, patesi of Lagash, 267 ; his
buildings, 272.
Urh ya, ii. 476.
Ur-kagina, King, 246.
Urmia lake called the lower of the
Nairi land, 270.
Ur-nina, King, 246 ; otherwise, Ur-
ghan, king of Lagash, 261.
Urninghoul, patesi of Lagash, 262, 263.
Urningirsu, son of Gudea, 267, 271.
Urru (or Gurru) dugga, a name of
Eridu, 252.
Uru-zag, name of Babylon or a quarter
thereof, 284.
Urzugurubar, father of Agukakrime,
286.
Usufructuary mortgage, Malabar ka-
nam, etc., 571.
Usurtasen I., 56, 84, 96 ; associated
with his father, 119; builder of
temples, 171.
Usurtasen II., 78.
Usurtasen III., fortifies his southern
frontier, 95.
Usury, law against, ii. 369.

Vaccaei, common cultivation of the
ground among, 460.
Vakhtang, Prince, Georgian laws edi
ted by, 458.
Vakhushta, Prince, 458.
Valignano, Father Alessandro da, on
China, ii. 265.
Value of money in China, ii. 310, 311,
313.
Valuer of horses, duty of, in the Chow
Li, ii. 52.
Van inscriptions, 302, 303 ; Van, called
the upper lake of Nairi land, 270.

S52

INDEX.

Varangis, female assemblies in Mini
coy, 567.
Venetian gentleman on Chinese trade,
ii. 260.
Verbiest, Father, succeeds Adam
Schall, ii. 382.
Verumpattam, Malabar land lease,
569.
Viceroy of Canton, his appeal to Ricci,
ii. 268.
Village communities in Badakshan, ii.
43 ; village headman, functions
of, under the Chow, ii. 44 ; village
officers, 309 ; halls and libraries
in modern China, 300, 309.
Village, size of Peruvian, ii. 453.
Vine, unknown to Akkadians, 231.
Virey, M. Philippe, on Prisse papyrus,
43 ; version of Ptah-hotep by, 209.
Virgil on silkworms, ii. m.
Virgins employed as recorders, ii. 260.
Virtuous officers banished to remote
governorships, ii. 147 ; series of,
under the Ming, ii. 242.
Virtuous ruler, ancient Chinese ideal
of, ii. 30.
Visscher's letters from Malabar, 548 ff. ;
on Malabar mortgages, 572.
Vivum vadium or vif-gage, ii. 416,
417.
Voluntary subscriptions at Rhodes for
public purposes, 442.
Von Luschau's photographs of Armen
ians, 304.
Votive tablets of Arabians, 509.
Vox populi, vox dei, ancient Chinese
doctrine, ii. 31.
Vulture stele, 261.

Wadi Maghara, copper mines ot, 95.
Wages (Egyptian) paid in beer and
bread, 54 ; real wages not low,
73 ; rate of wages in modern
China, ii. 310-15 ; wages and
prices fixed concurrently, 319 ;
standard rate named in the code,
365 ; wages of women, 315.
Waiters pay for their places in Marco's
China, ii. 223.
Walker, Major, Report on Malabar
land tenures by, 570.
Wall pictures of Egyptian tombs and
temples, 103.
Wang-mang, ii. 99 ; usurpation of,
1 14-6 ; enforces examinations,
120 ; compared to the Innovator,
187.
Wang-ming-tse, family and farm of,
ii. 298-303.'
Wang-mo-ki, valley in Fokien, ii. 298.

Wang-ngan-shi, financier of Sung
Dyn, ii. 116; called the Inno
vator, 170, 171, 173, l8°; nis
rationalism, 1S1 ; theory of taxa
tion and state trading, 182; Forced
Labour Emancipation Act, and
labour-aid-money, 182, 1 83 ;
Green Sprout law (state loans to
' farmers), 183 ; Ssema-kwang"s
criticism on, 184 ; losses to the
state by peculation, 185, 186 ;
cadastral survey and Barter law,
186 ; law for protection of horses,
187, 222 ; his edition of the
classics and death, 188 ; edicts
for and against his doctrines, 207 ;
remodels examinations, 210.
Wang-pou, the blameless censor, " as
sassinated " by Tai-tsou-ming, ii.
239, 242.
Wang-tchi-tchang on Ming finance, ii.
243-
Wang-yu-pu's paraphrase of Sacred
Edict, ii. 356.
Wanlih period = reign of Chin-tsong,
ii. 249.
Wan-yang against luxury, ii. 324.
War gods let loose on Babylonia,
285.
War horses, not to be allowed to feed
upon the children, 241.
Warka, ancient Erech, deeds found
at, 322.
Warnings to kings against injustice,
241.
Warring state period, ii. 59, 91, 93, 97,
478.
Wars between Babylonia and Assyria,
288, 289 ; Chinese wars with Hia
Tatars and Tibetans, ii. 171 ; be
tween Kin and Leao, 172.
Waste lands, arrangements for re
claiming, ii. 284.
Waste material, utilization of, ii. 317.
Watch-tower dedicated to Attar by
Minaean princes, 500.
Water-channels, numerous words for,
77-
Water rights, disputes concerning,
343 ; water rights in Arabia, 526 ;
giving water as a marriage rite,
462, 11. 474 ; water-tight compart
ments, boats with, 223.
Water works near Tyre, 406.
Watery abyss, the origin of all things
236. 6 '
Waving corn field, beauty of, admired
ii. 128. '
Wealth of ancient Egyptians not ex
changeable, 67 ; of temple officers
under Ramessids, 89 ; wealth spent

INDEX.

553

by Chinese minister, lest its in
heritance should demoralize heirs,
ii. 55 ; concentration of wealth
objected to, 329.
Wei, state of, ii. 113; one of the
three kingdoms, 124; coinage of,
156.
Wei Shang, a Chinese Leander, ii.
67.
Weights and coins of ancient China,
ii. 57 ; weight-money, specimen
of 7th century, So, n. ' ; weights,
Egyptian and Babylonian, ii.
443. 444, 446, 447-
Welsh laws of Howel on cutting tim
ber, ii. 51.
" Welsh mortgage " met with in China,
Malabar, Egypt, and among Bas
ques and Berbers, 323 ; nature of,
ii. 417,419, 420.
Wen, king of Chow, 44, ii. 40, 121 n. ;
Wen and Wu, ii. 78, 92, 108.
Wen-hien-thong-khao, encyclopaediaof
Ma-twan-lin, ii. 98.
Wen-ti, minister of, on riches, ii. 199.
Wen-ti of Wei Dynasty, ii. 128.
Wen-ti=the learned prince, ii. 237.
Wen-tien-hsiang on everlasting obli
gations, ii. 214.
West of Thebes = the Necropolis, 89.
Western Asia, protectorate of China
in, ii. 117 ; intercourse with, 128.
Western traders' overtures rejected,
ii. 140.
Wheels, philosophy of, in China, ii.
62, 63.
White Syrians of Strabo, 386.
Widowed gendre, Basque son-in-law,
his portion, 218.
"Widow's hills," ii. 342.
Widow's son, in Oriental romance, 379.
Widows, position of Chinese, ii. 347 ;
"Hall of Rest" for, 355; not
allowed to sell land, 359.
Wife, Egyptian, position of, 200 ; if
offending, to depart with her pro
perty, 202 ; various phrases for
workman's, 205 ; allowance of
1,800 drachms to, 208 ; her con
sent necessary to her husband's
acts, 209, 210 ; endowed in the
interest of the children, 210 ; Ba
bylonian wife compared to midday
sun, 238 ; her dowry liable for
husband's father's debts, 346 ; her
property reverts to her own family,
377 ; husband required to join
wife's tribe in parts of Arabia, 523 ;
status of acknowledged wife in
China, ii, 67, 68 ; " wife having the
conduct of an officer," 349 ; in-
VOL. 11. — P.C.

herits from husband, 347 ; not
lawful to marry any member of
deceased wife's tarwad, 469.
Wills, 12th Dyn., Egyptian, 203; of
foreigners, temp. Ptolemy 1. and
II., 221, 222 ; unknown in Baby
lonia, 377 ; will of Yang-chi, ii.
202 ; that ascribed to Kang-hi,
2S2, 2S3 ; wills in modern China,
351 ; objections to legalizing wills
apart from marriage in Malabar,
473-
Winckler, genealogy proposed by, 263.
Witch and emaciated person, proposal
to burn, ii. 51.
Witnesses, six required for smallest
transaction in Egypt, 195 ; quali
fications of, in Georgia, 458; three
required at Gortyn, 478 ; qualifi
cations of, in Syro-Roman code,
491 ; examined under torture in
China, ii. 376.
Woman sells herself as servant or con
cubine, 92 ; " woman's language "
in Akkad, 264.
Women as witnesses to deeds, 371 ;
Lycians said to be ruled by, 429 ;
women in Carian and Lycian in
scriptions, 429, 430 ; women's
apartments at Tiryns and My
cenae, 445 ; " women and two
elders" of Minaean tribe make
gifts, 509 ; influence of women in
ancient Arabia, 521 ; position of,
in Oman, 528 ; in East Africa, 531 ;
in Asben and Towarek tribes, 539 ;
in Canary islands, 543 ; women
employed in Chinese palace in
stead of eunuchs, ii. 138; wages
of, in modern China, 310, 315 ;
penalties for offences against, 353 ;
only imprisoned on capital
charges, 371.
Wonderful stories, book of, 402.
Woo chang, confluence of the Han
and Kiang at, ii. 13.
Wood on climate of Pamir plateau,
16 ; on kishlak of Badakshan, ii.
43,44-
Wood, repulse of English expedition
under Benjamin, ii. 272.
Writings, inspector of, in 5th Dyn.
tomb, 55 ; " writing for money,"
a sort of mortgage bond, 182 ;
marriage with and without, in
Syro-Roman code, 492 ; old Ber
ber, mainly used by Towarek
women, 540.
Written characters, where invented, 4;
introduction of written deeds in
Egypt, 191. O O

554

INDEX.

Wu, emperor of the Han Dynasty
(Han-wu-ti), ii. 105-7, 109, m,
118 ; favourite currency of, 116.
Wu, king of Leang Dynasty, ii. 146.
Wu, son of Wen, ii. 18, 22, 28, 44.
Wu, state of, ii. 97.
Wu-heou, usurpation of Empress, ii.
133 ; examinations regulated by,
144.
Wu-tching, president of Hanlin col
lege, ii. 230.
Wu-ti = the warlike Prince, ii. 237.
Wu-tsong, anti-Buddhist edict of, ii.
148.
Wu-tsong-ming, ii. 246.
Yang-chi quoted, ii. 57 ; will of, 202 ;
advice to his sons, 203 ; provisions
for relations and servants, 204,
205 ; on tutors, 311 ; custom of
his family, 362 n.
Yang-choo, ii. 87 ; Epicurean egotism
of, 89-91.
Yang-chow, see Hang-chow.
Yang-jin innovating Tang financier,
ii. 150, 151.
Yang-ke-ching objects to horse fairs,
ii. 246.
Yang-koui-shan, philosopher quoted
by Choo-hi, ii. 213.
Yangs, regency of the three, ii. 242.
Yang-se-khy, advice to Seuen-tsong,
ii. 242.
Yao, legendary emperor of China, 17,
32, ii. 17, 29, 45,46.
Yao and Shun, ii. 89, 91, 92.
Yarim or Yarkand river, ii. 3, 5.
Yarkand and Khotan, village clusters
in, ii. 44 ; Yarkand and Cashgar
welcome Chinese protectorate, 287.
Year, length of Chinese, ii. 23 ; of
Egyptian, ii. 441 ; of Babylonian,
437 ; Peruvian, 454.
Yeha, inscription from, 510.
Yeliutache, ii. 172, 227.
Yeliu-tchoutsai, minister of Ogatai, ii.
175-7, 224.
Yellow caps, insurrection of, ii. 121 ;
yellow mantle, the badge of
Buddhism, 145.
Yellow river, change of its course, ii.
116 and n., 230, 287.
Yemenite inscriptions, 19; intercourse
between Yemen and Egypt, 501 ;
commercial importance of ancient

cities of, 503 ; noble ladies un
veiled in, 521.
Yen and Tse, alliance and gifts be
tween, ii. 81.
Yen-tze, quotation from, ii. 95, n. 8.
Yenta demands a market for horses,
ii. 246-8.
Yesien, Chinese emperor captured by,
ii. 242.
Yew, king of Chow, ii. 28.
Yi King, Chinese classic, 31, ii. 16,
200, 202, 207, 488-90.
Yin, Bamboo annals end with reign of,
ii. 29.
Yng - tsong, Ming emperor taken
prisoner by Tatars, ii. 242, 243.
Yng-tsong, Sung emperor, ii. 170.
Yo-fei, general and scholar, ii. 174.
Young married women the victims in
Chinese society, ii. 354.
Yu, the great, hydraulic achievements
of, 276 ; emperor of China, ii. 17,
20, 29, 30, 57 ; enumerates nine
classes of land, 13 ; metal work
the favourite industry of, 61.
Yuen Wei Dynasty, ii. 144 ;. sales of
land restricted by, 150.
Yule, Sir Henry, on Peg/ilotti, ii. 234.
Yu-mon passage or Jade gate, 18.
Yung-ching, Mantchu emperor, ii. 274,
281-6, 357, 380.
Yung-lo deposes his nephew, ii. 239 ;
tomb of, 241 n.
Yunnan, rebellion in, ii. 278.
Yuruks, 415.
Zabibija, Arab queen, tributary to
Tiglath-pileser III., 511.
Zabid, women of, 523.
Zabu, king of Babel, 282.
Zaiton, see Zayton.
Zaleucus, legislation ascribed to, 447,
448.
Zamasumiddin, at war with Assyria,
291.
Zarpanit and Merodach, gifts dedi
cated to, 286.
Zayton = Chinchow, ii. 217, 218, 231,
232.
Zerca el Yemamah, long-sighted Arab
lady, 529.
Zi = spirit, 235.
Zimbabwe ruins, 518.
Zodiac, constellations of, ii. 437.
Zophar the Naamathite, 499.

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