Title: A History of Chinese Literature
Author: Herbert A Giles
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Title: A History of Chinese Literature
Author: Herbert A Giles
First Published 1923 by D. Appleton and Company.
Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
A HISTORY OF CHINESE LITERATURE
BY
HERBERT A. GILES
PREFACE
This is the first attempt made in any language, including Chinese,
to produce a history of Chinese literature.
Native scholars, with their endless critiques and appreciations of
individual works, do not seem ever to have contemplated anything
of the kind, realising, no doubt, the utter hopelessness, from a
Chinese point of view, of achieving even comparative success in a
general historical survey of the subject. The voluminous character
of a literature which was already in existence some six centuries
before the Christian era, and has run on uninterruptedly until the
present date, may well have given pause to writers aiming at
completeness. The foreign student, however, is on a totally
different footing. It may be said without offence that a work
which would be inadequate to the requirements of a native public,
may properly be submitted to English readers as an introduction
into the great field which lies beyond.
Acting upon the suggestion of Mr. Gosse, to whom I am otherwise
indebted for many valuable hints, I have devoted a large portion
of this book to translation, thus enabling the Chinese author, so
far as translation will allow, to speak for himself. I have also
added, here and there, remarks by native critics, that the reader
may be able to form an idea of the point of view from which the
Chinese judge their own productions.
It only remains to be stated that the translations, with the
exception of a few passages from Legge's "Chinese Classics," in
each case duly acknowledged, are my own.
Herbert A. Giles.
Cambridge.
A HISTORY OF CHINESE LITERATURE
BOOK THE FIRST
THE FEUDAL PERIOD (B.C. 600-200)
CHAPTER I
LEGENDARY AGES--EARLY CHINESE CIVILISATION--ORIGIN OF WRITING
The date of the beginning of all things has been nicely calculated by
Chinese chronologers. There was first of all a period when Nothing
existed, though some enthusiasts have attempted to deal with a period
antecedent even to that. Gradually Nothing took upon itself the form
and limitations of Unity, represented by a point at the centre of a
circle. Thus there was a Great Monad, a First Cause, an Aura, a
Zeitgeist, or whatever one may please to call it.
After countless ages, spent apparently in doing nothing, this Monad
split into Two Principles, one active, the other passive; one
positive, the other negative; light and darkness; male and female. The
interaction of these Two Principles resulted in the production of all
things, as we see them in the universe around us, 2,269,381 years ago.
Such is the cosmogony of the Chinese in a nutshell.
The more sober Chinese historians, however, are content to begin with
a sufficiently mythical emperor, who reigned only 2800 years before
the Christian era. The practice of agriculture, the invention of
wheeled vehicles, and the simpler arts of early civilisation are
generally referred to this period; but to the dispassionate European
student it is a period of myth and legend: in fact, we know very
little about it. Neither do we know much, in the historical sense, of
the numerous rulers whose names and dates appear in the chronology of
the succeeding two thousand years. It is not indeed until we reach the
eighth century B.C. that anything like history can be said to begin.
For reasons which will presently be made plain, the sixth century B.C.
is a convenient starting-point for the student of Chinese literature.
China was then confined to a comparatively small area, lying for the
most part between the Yellow River on the north and the river Yang-
tsze on the south. No one knows where the Chinese came from. Some hold
the fascinating theory that they were emigrants from Accadia in the
ancient kingdom of Babylonia; others have identified them with the
lost tribes of Israel. No one seems to think they can possibly have
originated in the fertile plains where they are now found. It appears
indeed to be an ethnological axiom that every race must have come from
somewhere outside its own territory. However that may be, the China of
the eighth century B.C. consisted of a number of Feudal States, ruled
by nobles owning allegiance to a Central State, at the head of which
was a king. The outward tokens of subjection were homage and tribute;
but after all, the allegiance must have been more nominal than real,
each State being practically an independent kingdom. This condition of
things was the cause of much mutual jealousy, and often of bloody
warfare, several of the States hating one another quite as cordially
as Athens and Sparta at their best.
There was, notwithstanding, considerable physical civilisation in the
ancient States of those early days. Their citizens, when not employed
in cutting each other's throats, enjoyed a reasonable security of life
and property. They lived in well-built houses; they dressed in silk or
homespun; they wore shoes of leather; they carried umbrellas; they sat
on chairs and used tables; they rode in carts and chariots; they
travelled by boat; and they ate their food off plates and dishes of
pottery, coarse perhaps, yet still superior to the wooden trencher
common not so very long ago in Europe. They measured time by the
sundial, and in the Golden Age they had the two famous calendar trees,
representations of which have come down to us in sculpture, dating
from about A.D. 150. One of these trees put forth a leaf every day for
fifteen days, after which a leaf fell off daily for fifteen more days.
The other put forth a leaf once a month for half a year, after which a
leaf fell off monthly for a similar period. With these trees growing
in the courtyard, it was possible to say at a glance what was the day
of the month, and what was the month of the year. But civilisation
proved unfavourable to their growth, and the species became extinct.
In the sixth century B.C. the Chinese were also in possession of a
written language, fully adequate to the most varied expression of
human thought, and indeed almost identical with their present script,
allowing, among other things, for certain modifications of form
brought about by the substitution of paper and a camel's-hair brush
for the bamboo tablet and stylus of old. The actual stages by which
that point was reached are so far unknown to us. China had her Cadmus
in the person of a prehistoric individual named Ts`ang Chieh, who is
said to have had four eyes, and to have taken the idea of a written
language from the markings of birds' claws upon the sand. Upon the
achievement of his task the sky rained grain and evil spirits mourned
by night. Previous to this mankind had no other system than rude
methods of knotting cords and notching sticks for noting events or
communicating with one another at a distance.
As to the origin of the written language of China, invention is
altogether out of the question. It seems probable that in prehistoric
ages, the Chinese, like other peoples, began to make rude pictures of
the sun, moon, and stars, of man himself, of trees, of fire, of rain,
and they appear to have followed these up by ideograms of various
kings. How far they went in this direction we can only surmise. There
are comparatively few obviously pictorial characters and ideograms to
be found even in the script of two thousand years ago; but
investigations carried on for many years by Mr. L. C. Hopkins, H.M.
Consul, Chefoo, and now approaching completion, point more and more to
the fact that the written language will some day be recognised as
systematically developed from pictorial symbols. It is, at any rate,
certain that at a very early date subsequent to the legendary period
of "knotted cords" and "notches," while the picture-symbols were still
comparatively few, some master-mind reached at a bound the phonetic
principle, from which point the rapid development of a written
language such as we now find would be an easy matter.
CHAPTER II
CONFUCIUS--THE FIVE CLASSICS
In B.C. Confucius was born. He may be regarded as the founder of
Chinese literature. During his years of office as a Government servant
and his years of teaching and wandering as an exile, he found time to
rescue for posterity certain valuable literary fragments of great
antiquity, and to produce at least one original work of his own. It is
impossible to assert that before his time there was anything in the
sense of what we understand by the term general literature. The
written language appears to have been used chiefly for purposes of
administration. Many utterances, however, of early, not to say
legendary, rulers had been committed to writing at one time or
another, and such of these as were still extant were diligently
collected and edited by Confucius, forming what is now known as the
/Shu Ching/ or Book of History. The documents of which this work is
composed are said to have been originally one hundred in all, and they
cover a period extending from the twenty-fourth to the eighth century
B.C. They give us glimpses of an age earlier than that of Confucius,
if not actually so early as is claimed. The first two, for instance,
refer to the Emperors Yao and Shun, whose reigns, extending from B.C.
2357 to 2205, are regarded as the Golden Age of China. We read how the
former monarch "united the various parts of his domain in bonds of
peace, so that concord reigned among the black-haired people." He
abdicated in favour of Shun, who is described as being profoundly
wise, intelligent, and sincere. We are further told that Shun was
chosen because of his great filial piety, which enabled him to live in
harmony with an unprincipled father, a shifty stepmother, and an
arrogant half-brother, and, moreover, to effect by his example a
comparative reformation of their several characters.
We next come to a very famous personage, who founded the Hsia dynasty
in B.C. 2205, and is known as the Great Yü. It was he who, during the
reign of the Emperor Shun, successfully coped with a devastating
flood, which has been loosely identified with the Noachic Deluge, and
in reference to which it was said in the /Tso Chuan/, "How grand was
the achievement of Yü, how far-reaching his glorious energy! But for
Yü we should all have been fishes." The following is his own account
account (Legge's translation):--
"The inundating waters seemed to assail the heavens, and in their vast
extent embraced the mountains and overtopped the hills, so that people
were bewildered and overwhelmed. I mounted my four conveyances (carts,
boats, sledges, and spiked shoes), and all along the hills hewed down
the woods, at the same time, along with Yi, showing the multitudes how
to get flesh to eat. I opened passages for the streams throughout the
nine provinces, and conducted them to the sea. I deepened the channels
and canals, and conducted them to the streams, at the same time, along
with Chi, sowing grain, and showing the multitudes how to procure the
food of toil in addition to flesh meat. I urged them further to
exchange what they had for what they had not, and to dispose of their
accumulated stores. In this way all the people got grain to eat, and
all the States began to come under good rule."
A small portion of the Book of History is in verse:--
"The people should be cherished,
And should not be downtrodden.
The people are the root of a country,
And if the root is firm, the country will be tranquil.
. . . . . . .
The palace a wild for lust,
The country a wild for hunting,
Rich wine, seductive music,
Lofty roofs, carved walls,--
Given any one of these,
And the result can only be ruin."
From the date of the foundation of the Hsia dynasty the throne of the
empire was transmitted from father to son, and there were no more
abdications in favour of virtuous sages. The fourth division of the
Book of History deals with the decadence of the Hsia rulers and their
final displacement in B.C. 1766 by T`ang the Completer, founder of the
Shang dynasty. By B.C. 1122, the Shang sovereigns had similarly lapsed
from the kingly qualities of their founder to even a lower level of
degradation and vice. Then arose one of the purest and most venerated
heroes of Chinese history, popularly known by his canonisation as Wên
Wang. He was hereditary ruler of a principality in the modern province
of Shensi, and in B.C. 1144 he was denounced as dangerous to the
throne. He was seized and thrown into prison, where he passed two
years, occupying himself with the Book of Changes, to which we shall
presently return. At length the Emperor, yielding to the entreaties of
the people, backed up by the present of a beautiful concubine and some
fine horses, set him at liberty and commissioned him to make war upon
the frontier tribes. To his dying day he never ceased to remonstrate
against the cruelty and corruption of the age, and his name is still
regarded as one of the most glorious in the annals of the empire. It
was reserved for his son, known as Wu Wang, to overthrow the Shang
dynasty and mount the throne as first sovereign of the Chou dynasty,
which was to last for eight centuries to come. The following is a
speech by the latter before a great assembly of nobles who were siding
against the House of Shang. It is preserved among others in the Book
of History, and is assigned to the year B.C. 1133 (Legge's
translation):--
"Heaven and Earth are the parents of all creatures; and of all
creatures man is the most highly endowed. The sincere, intelligent,
and perspicacious among men becomes the great sovereign, and the great
sovereign is the parent of the people. But now, Shou, the king of
Shang, does not reverence Heaven above, and inflicts calamities on the
people below. He has been abandoned to drunkenness, and reckless in
lust. He has dared to exercise cruel oppression. Along with criminals
he has punished all their relatives. He has put men into office on the
hereditary principle. He has made it his pursuit to have palaces,
towers, pavilions, embankments, ponds, and all other extravagances, to
the most painful injury of you, the myriad people. He has burned and
roasted the loyal and good. He has ripped up pregnant women. Great
Heaven was moved with indignation, and charged by deceased father,
Wên, reverently to display its majesty; but he died before the work
was completed.
"On this account I, Fa, who am but a little child, have, by means of
you, the hereditary rulers of my friendly States, contemplated the
government of Shang; but Shou has no repentant heart. He abides
squatting on his heels, not serving God or the spirits of heaven and
earth, neglecting also the temple of his ancestors, and not
sacrificing in it. The victims and the vessels of millet all become
the prey of wicked robbers; and still he says, 'The people are mine:
the decree is mine,' never trying to correct his contemptuous mind.
Now Heaven, to protect the inferior people, made for them rulers, and
made for them instructors, that they might be able to be aiding to
God, and secure the tranquillity of the four quarters of the empire.
In regard to who are criminals and who are not, how dare I give any
allowance to my own wishes?
"'Where the strength is the same, measure the virtue of the parties;
where the virtue is the same, measure their righteousness.' Shou has
hundreds of thousands and myriads of ministers, but they have hundreds
of thousands and myriads of minds; I have three thousand ministers,
but they have one mind. The iniquity of Shang is full. Heaven gives
command to destroy it. If I did not comply with Heaven, my iniquity
would be as great.
"I, who am a little child, early and late am filled with
apprehensions. I have received charge from my deceased father, Wên; I
have offered special sacrifice to God; I have performed the due
services to the great Earth; and I lead the multitude of you to
execute the punishment appointed by Heaven. Heaven compassionates the
people. What the people desire, Heaven will be found to give effect
to. Do you aid me, the one man, to cleanse for ever all within the
four seas. Now is the time!--it may not be lost."
Two of the documents which form the Book of History are directed
against luxury and drunkenness, to both of which the people seemed
likely to give way even within measurable distance of the death of Wên
Wang. The latter had enacted that wine (that is to say, ardent spirits
distilled from rice) should only be used on sacrificial occasions, and
then under strict supervision; and it is laid down, almost as a
general principle, that all national misfortunes, culminating in the
downfall of a dynasty, may be safely ascribed to the abuse of wine.
The /Shih Ching/, or Book of Odes, is another work for the
preservation of which we are indebted to Confucius. It consists of a
collection of rhymed ballads in various metres, usually four words to
the line, composed between the reign of the Great Yü and the beginning
of the sixth century B.C. These, which now number 305, are popularly
known as the "Three Hundred," and are said by some to have been
selected by Confucius from no less than 3000 pieces. They are arranged
under four heads, as follows:--(a) Ballads commonly sung by the people
in the various feudal States and forwarded periodically by the nobles
to their suzerain, the Son of Heaven. The ballads were then submitted
to the Imperial Musicians, who were able to judge from the nature of
such compositions what would be the manners and customs prevailing in
each State, and to advise the suzerain accordingly as to the good or
evil administration of each of his vassal rulers. (b) Odes sung at
ordinary entertainments given by the suzerain. (c) Odes sung on grand
occasions when the feudal nobles were gathered together. (d)
Panegyrics and sacrificial odes.
Confucius himself attached the utmost importance to his labours in
this direction. "Have you learned the Odes?" he inquired upon one
occasion of his son; and on receiving an answer in the negative,
immediately told the youth that until he did so he would be unfit for
the society of intellectual men. Confucius may indeed be said to have
anticipated the apophthegm attributed by Fletcher of Salotun to a
"very wise man," namely, that he who should be allowed to make a
nation's "ballads need care little who made its laws." And it was
probably this appreciation by Confucius that gave rise to an
extraordinary literary craze in reference to these Odes. Early
commentators, incapable of seeing the simple natural beauties of the
poems, which have furnished endless household words and a large stock
of phraseology to the language of the present day, and at the same
time unable to ignore the deliberate judgment of the Master, set to
work to read into countryside ditties deep moral and political
significations. Every single one of the immortal Three Hundred has
thus been forced to yield some hidden meaning and point an appropriate
moral. If a maiden warns her lover not to be too rash--
"Don't come in, sir, please!
Don't break my willow-trees!
Not that that would very much grieve me;
But alack-a-day! what would my parents say?
And love you as I may,
I cannot bear to think what that would be."--
commentators promptly discover that the piece refers to a feudal noble
whose brother had been plotting against him, and to the excuses of the
former for not visiting the latter with swift and exemplary
punishment.
Another independent young lady may say--
"If you will love me dear, my lord,
I'll pick up my skirts and cross the ford,
But if from your heart you turn me out . . .
Well, you're not the only man about,
You silly, silly, silliest lout!"--
still commentaries are not wanting to show that these straightforward
words express the wish of the people of a certain small State that
some great State would intervene and put an end to an existing feud in
the ruling family. Native scholars are, of course, hide-bound in the
traditions of commentators, but European students will do well to seek
the meaning of the Odes within the compass of the Odes themselves.
Possibly the very introduction of these absurdities may have helped to
preserve to our day a work which would otherwise have been considered
too trivial to merit the attention of scholars. Chinese who are in the
front rank of scholarship know it by heart, and each separate piece
has been searchingly examined, until the force of exegesis can no
farther go. There is one famous line which runs, according to the
accepted commentary, "The muddiness of the Ching river appears from
the (clearness of the) Wei river." In 1790 the Emperor Ch`ien Lung,
dissatisfied with this interpretation, sent a viceroy to examine the
rivers. The latter reported that the Ching was really clear and the
Wei muddy, so that the wording of the line must mean "The Ching river
is made muddy by the Wei river."
The following is a specimen of one of the longer of the Odes, saddled,
like all the rest, with an impossible political interpretation, of
which nothing more need be said:--
"You seemed a guileless youth enough,
Offering for silk your woven stuff;[1]
But silk was not required by you;
I was the silk you had in view.
With you I crossed the ford, and while
We wandered on for many a mile
I said, 'I do not wish delay,
But friends must fix our wedding-day. . . .
Oh, do not let my words give pain,
But with the autumn come again.'
"And then I used to watch and wait
To see you passing through the gate;
And sometimes, when I watched in vain,
My tears would flow like falling rain;
But when I saw my darling boy,
I laughed and cried aloud for joy.
The fortune-tellers, you declared,
Had all pronounced us duly paired;
'Then bring a carriage,' I replied,
'And I'll away to be your bride.'
"The mulberry-leaf, not yet undone
By autumn chill, shines in the sun.
O tender dove, I would advise,
Beware the fruit that tempts thy eyes!
O maiden fair, not yet a spouse,
List lightly not to lovers' vows!
A man may do this wrong, and time
Will fling its shadow o'er his crime;
A woman who has lost her name
Is doomed to everlasting shame.
"The mulberry-tree upon the ground
Now sheds its yellow leaves around.
Three years have slipped away from me
Since first I shared your poverty;
And now again, alas the day!
Back through the ford I take my way.
My heart is still unchanged, but you
Have uttered words now proved untrue;
And you have left me to deplore
A love that can be mine no more.
"For three long years I was your wife,
And led in truth a toilsome life;
Early to rise and late to bed,
Each day alike passed o'er my head.
I honestly fulfilled my part,
And you--well, you have broke my heart.
The truth my brothers will not know,
So all the more their gibes will flow.
I grieve in silence and repine
That such a wretched fate is mine.
"Ah, hand in hand to face old age!--
Instead, I turn a bitter page.
O for the river-banks of yore;
O for the much-loved marshy shore;
The hours of girlhood, with my hair
Ungathered, as we lingered there.
The words we spoke, that seemed so true,
I little thought that I should rue;
I little thought the vows we swore
Would some day bind us two no more."
[1] Supposed to have been stamped pieces of linen, used as a
circulating medium before the invention of coins.
Many of the Odes deal with warfare, and with the separation of wives
from their husbands; others, with agriculture and with the chase, with
marriage and feasting. The ordinary sorrows of life are fully
represented, and to these may be added frequent complaints against the
harshness of officials, one speaker going so far as to wish he were a
tree without consciousness, without house, and without family. The
old-time theme of "eat, drink, and be merry" is brought out as
follows:--
"You have coats and robes,
But you do not trail them;
You have chariots and horses,
But you do not ride in them.
By and by you will die,
And another will enjoy them.
"You have courtyards and halls,
But they are not sprinkled and swept;
You have bells and drums,
But they are not struck.
By and by you will die,
And another will possess them.
"You have wine and food;
Why not play daily on your lute,
That you may enjoy yourself now
And lengthen your days?
By and by you will die,
And another will take your place."
The Odes are especially valuable for the insight they give us into the
manners, and customs, and beliefs of the Chinese before the age of
Confucius. How far back they extend it is quite impossible to say. An
eclipse of the sun, "an event of evil omen," is mentioned in one of
the Odes as a recent occurrence on a certain day which works out as
the 29th August, B.C. 775; and this eclipse has been verified for that
date. The following lines are from Legge's rendering of this Ode:--
"The sun and moon announce evil,
Not keeping to their proper paths.
All through the kingdom there is no proper government,
Because the good are not employed.
For the moon to be eclipsed
Is but an ordinary matter.
Now that the sun has been eclipsed,
How bad it is!"
The rainbow was regarded, not as a portent of evil, but as an improper
combination of the dual forces of nature,--
"There is a rainbow in the east,
And no one dares point at it,"--
and is applied figuratively to women who form improper connections.
The position of women generally seems to have been very much what it
is at the present day. In an Ode which describes the completion of a
palace for one of the ancient princes, we are conducted through the
rooms,--
"Here will he live, here will he sit,
Here will he laugh, here will he talk,"--
until we come to the bedchamber, where he will awake, and call upon
the chief diviner to interpret his dream of bears and serpents. The
interpretation (Legge) is as follows:--
"Sons shall be born to him:--
They will be put to sleep on couches;
They will be clothed in robes;
They will have sceptres to play with;
Their cry will be loud.
They will be resplendent with red knee-covers,
The future princes of the land.
"Daughters shall be born to him:--
They will be put to sleep on the ground;
They will be clothed with wrappers;
They will have tiles to play with.
It will be theirs neither to do wrong nor to do good.
Only about the spirits and the food will they have to think,
And to cause no sorrow to their parents."
The distinction thus drawn is severe enough, and it is quite
unnecessary to make a comparison, as some writers on China have done,
between the tile and the sceptre, as though the former were but a
dirty potsherd, good enough for a girl. A tile was used in the early
ages as a weight for the spindle, and is here used merely to indicate
the direction which a girl's activities should take.
Women are further roughly handled in an Ode which traces the
prevailing misgovernment to their interference in affairs of State and
in matters which do not lie within their province:--
"A clever man builds a city,
A clever woman lays one low;
With all her qualifications, that clever woman
Is but an ill-omened bird.
A woman with a long tongue
Is a flight of steps leading to calamity;
For disorder does not come from heaven,
But is brought about by women.
Among those who cannot be trained or taught
Are women and eunuchs."
About seventy kinds of plants are mentioned in the Odes, including the
bamboo, barley, beans, convolvulus, dodder, dolichos, hemp, indigo,
liquorice, melon, millet, peony, pepper, plantain, scallions, sorrel,
sowthistle, tribulus, and wheat; about thirty kinds of trees,
including the cedar, cherry, chestnut, date, hazel, medlar, mulberry,
oak, peach, pear, plum, and willow; about thirty kinds of animals,
including the antelope, badger, bear, boar, elephant, fox, leopard,
monkey, rat, rhinoceros, tiger, and wolf; about thirty kinds of birds,
including the crane, eagle, egret, magpie, oriole, swallow, and
wagtail; about ten kinds of fishes, including the barbel, bream, carp,
and tench; and about twenty kinds of insects, including the ant,
cicada, glow-worm, locust, spider, and wasp.
Among the musical instruments of the Odes are found the flute, the
drum, the bell, the lute, and the Pandæan pipes; among the metals are
gold and iron, with an indirect allusion to silver and copper; and
among the arms and munitions of war are bows and arrows, spears,
swords, halberds, armour, grappling-hooks, towers on wheels for use
against besieged cities, and gags for soldiers' mouths, to prevent
them talking in the ranks on the occasion of night attacks.
The idea of a Supreme Being is brought out very fully in the Odes--
"Great is God,
Ruling in majesty."
Also,
"How mighty is God,
The Ruler of mankind!
How terrible is His majesty!"
He is apparently in the form of man, for in one place we read of His
footprint. He hates the oppression of great States, although in
another passage we read--
"Behold Almighty God;
Who is there whom He hates?"
He comforts the afflicted. He is free from error. His "Way" is hard to
follow. He is offended by sin. He can be appeased by sacrifice:--
"We fill the sacrificial vessels with offerings,
Both the vessels of wood, and those of earthenware.
Then when the fragrance is borne on high,
God smells the savour and is pleased."
One more quotation, which, in deference to space limits, must be the
last, exhibits the husbandman of early China in a very pleasing
light:--
"The clouds form in dense masses,
And the rain falls softly down.
Oh, may it first water the public lands,
And then come to our private fields!
Here shall some corn be left standing,
Here some sheaves unbound;
Here some handfuls shall be dropped,
And there some neglected ears;
These are for the benefit of the widow."
The next of the pre-Confucian works, and possibly the oldest of all,
is the famous /I Ching/, or Book of Changes. It is ascribed to WÊN
WANG, the virtual founder of the Chou dynasty, whose son, WU WANG,
became the first sovereign of a long line, extending from B.C. 1122 to
B.C. 249. It contains a fanciful system of philosophy, deduced
originally from Eight Diagrams consisting of triplet combinations or
arrangements of a line and a divided line, either one or the other of
which is necessarily repeated twice, and in two cases three times, in
the same combination. Thus there may be three lines [1], or three
divided lines [1], a divided line above or below two lines [1] [1], a
divided line between two lines [1], and so on, eight in all. These so
called diagrams are said to have been invented two thousand years and
more before Christ by the monarch Fu Hsi, who copied them from the
back of a tortoise. He subsequently increased the above simple
combinations to sixty-four double ones, on the permutations of which
are based the philosophical speculations of the Book of Changes. Each
diagram represents some power in nature, either active or passive,
such as fire, water, thunder, earth, and so on.
[1] ----- -- -- -- -- ----- ----- ----- -- -- -- --
----- -- -- ----- ----- -- -- -- -- -- -- -----
----- -- -- ----- -- -- ----- -- -- ----- -- --
The text consists of sixty-four short essays, enigmatically and
symbolically expressed, on important themes, mostly of a moral,
social, and political character, and based upon the same number of
lineal figures, each made up of six miles, some of which are whole and
the others divided. The text is followed by commentaries, called the
Ten Wings, probably of a later date and commonly ascribed to
Confucius, who declared that were a hundred years added to his life he
would devote fifty of them to a study of the /I Ching/.
The following is a specimen (Legge's translation):--
"Text. ----- This suggests the idea of one treading on the tail of a
----- tiger, which does not bite him. There will be progress
-- -- and success.
-----
-----
-----
"1. The first line, undivided, shows its subject treading his
accustomed path. If he go forward, there will be no error.
"2. The second line, undivided, shows its subject treading the path
that is level and easy;--a quiet and solitary man, to whom, if he be
firm and correct, there will be good fortune.
"3. The third line, divided, shows a one-eyed man who thinks he can
see; a lame man who thinks he can walk well; one who treads on the
tail of a tiger and is bitten. All this indicates ill-fortune. We have
a mere bravo acting the part of a great ruler.
"4. The fourth line, undivided, shows its subject treading on the tail
of a tiger. He becomes full of apprehensive caution, and in the end
there will be good fortune.
"5. The fifth line, undivided, shows the resolute tread of its
subject. Though he be firm and correct, there will be peril.
"6. The sixth line, undivided, tells us to look at the whole course
that is trodden, and examine the presage which that gives. If it be
complete and without failure, there will be great good fortune.
"/Wing/.--In this hexagram we have the symbol of weakness treading on
that of strength.
"The lower trigram indicates pleasure and satisfaction, and responds
to the upper indicating strength. Hence it is said, 'He treads on the
tail of a tiger, which does not bite him; there will be progress and
success.'
"The fifth line is strong, in the centre, and in its correct place.
Its subject occupies the God-given position, and falls into no
distress or failure;--his action will be brilliant."
As may be readily inferred from the above extract, no one really knows
what is meant by the apparent gibberish of the Book of Changes. This
is freely admitted by all learned Chinese, who nevertheless hold
tenaciously to the belief that important lessons could be derived from
its pages if we only had the wit to understand them. Foreigners have
held various theories on the subject. Dr. Legge declared that he had
found the key, with the result already shown. The late Terrien de la
Couperie took a bolder flight, unaccompanied by any native
commentator, and discovered in this cherished volume a vocabulary of
the language of the Bák tribes. A third writer regards it as a
calendar of the lunar year, and so forth.
The /Li Chi/, or Book of Rites, seems to have been a compilation by
two cousins, known as the Elder and the Younger TAI, who flourished in
the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. From existing documents, said to have
emanated from Confucius and his disciples, the Elder Tai prepared a
work in 85 sections on what may be roughly called social rites. The
Younger Tai reduced these to 46 sections. Later scholars, such as Ma
Jung and Chêng Hsüan, left their mark upon the work, and it was not
until near the close of the 2nd century A.D. that finality in this
direction was achieved. It then became known as a /Chi/ = Record, not
as a /Ching/ = Text, the latter term being reserved by the orthodox
solely for such books as have reached us direct from the hands of
Confucius. The following is an extract (Legge's translation):--
Confucius said: "Formerly, along with Lao Tan, I was assisting at a
burial in the village of Hsiang, and when we had got to the path the
sun was eclipsed. Lao Tan said to me, 'Ch`iu, let the bier be stopped
on the left of the road; and then let us wail and wait till the
eclipse pass away. When it is light again we will proceed.' He said
that this was the rule. When we had returned and completed the burial,
I said to him, 'In the progress of a bier there should be no
returning. When there is an eclipse of the sun, we do not know whether
it will pass away quickly or not; would it not have been better to go
on?' Lao Tan said, 'When the prince of a state is going to the court
of the Son of Heaven, he travels while he can see the sun. At sundown
he halts and presents his offerings (to the spirit of the way). When a
great officer is on a mission, he travels while he can see the sun,
and at sundown he halts. Now a bier does not set forth in the early
morning, nor does it rest anywhere at night; but those who travel by
starlight are only criminals and those who are hastening to the
funeral rites of a parent.'"
Other specimens will be found in Chapters iii. and iv.
Until the time of the Ming dynasty, A.D. 1368, another and a much
older work, known as the /Chou Li/, or Rites of the Chou dynasty, and
dealing more with constitutional matters, was always coupled with the
/Li Chi/, and formed one of the then recognised Six Classics. There is
still a third work of the same class, and also of considerable
antiquity, called the /I Li/. Its contents treat mostly of the
ceremonial observances of everyday life.
We now come to the last of the Five Classics as at present
constituted, the /Ch`un Ch`iu/, or Spring and Autumn Annals. This is a
chronological record of the chief events in the State of Lu between
the years B.C. 722-484, and is generally regarded as the work of
Confucius, whose native State was Lu. The entries are of the briefest,
and comprise notices of incursions, victories, defeats, deaths,
murders, treaties, and natural phenomena.
The following are a few illustrative extracts:--
"In the 7th year of Duke Chao, in spring, the Northern Yen State made
peace with the Ch`i State.
"In the 3rd month the Duke visited the Ch`u State.
"In summer, on the /chia shên/ day of the 4th month (March 11th, B.C.
594), the sun was eclipsed.
"In the 7th year of Duke Chuang (B.C. 685), in summer, in the 4th
moon, at midnight, there was a shower of stars like rain."
The Spring and Autumn owes its name to the old custom of prefixing to
each entry the year, month, day, and season when the event recorded
took place; spring, as a commentator explains, including summer, and
autumn winter. It was the work which Confucius singled out as that one
by which men would know and commend him, and Mencius considered it
quite as important an achievement as the draining of the empire by the
Great Yü. The latter said, "Confucius completed the Spring and Autumn,
and rebellious ministers and bad sons were struck with terror."
Consequently, just as in the case of the Odes, native wits set to work
to read into the bald text all manner of hidden meanings, each entry
being supposed to contain approval or condemnation, their efforts
resulting in what is now known as the praise-and-blame theory. The
critics of the Han dynasty even went so far as to declare the very
title elliptical for "praise life-giving like spring, and blame life-
withering like autumn."
Such is the /Ch`un Ch`iu/; and if that were all, it is difficult to
say how the boast of Confucius could ever have been fulfilled. But it
is not all; there is a saving clause. For bound up, so to speak, with
the Spring and Autumn, and forming as it were an integral part of the
work, is a commentary known as the /Tso Chuan/ or TSO's Commentary. Of
the writer himself, who has been canonised as the Father of Prose, and
to whose pen has also been attributed the /Kuo Yü/ or Episodes of the
States, next to nothing is known, except that he was a disciple of
Confucius; but his glowing narrative remains, and is likely to
continue to remain, one of the most precious heirlooms of the Chinese
people.
What Tso did is this. He took the dry bones of these annals and
clothed them with life and reality by adding a more or less complete
setting to each of the events recorded. He describes the loves and
hates of the heroes, their battles, their treaties, their feastings,
and their deaths, in a style which is always effective, and often
approaches to grandeur. Circumstances of apparently the most trivial
character are expanded into interesting episodes, and every now and
again some quaint conceit or scrap of proverbial literature is thrown
in to give a passing flavour of its own. Under the 21st year of Duke
Hsi, the Spring and Autumn has the following exiguous entry:--
"In summer there was great drought."
To this the /Tso Chuan/ adds--
"In consequence of the drought the Duke wished to burn a witch. One of
his officers, however, said to him, 'That will not affect the drought.
Rather repair your city walls and ramparts; eat less, and curtail your
expenditure; practise strict economy, and urge the people to help one
another. That is the essential; what have witches to do in the matter?
If God wishes her to be slain, it would have been better not to allow
her to be born. If she can cause a drought, burning her will only make
things worse.' The Duke took this advice, and during that year,
although there was famine, it was not very severe."
Under the 12th year of Duke Hsüan the Spring and Autumn says--
"In spring the ruler of the Ch`u State besieged the capital of the
Chêng State."
Thereupon the /Tso Chuan/ adds a long account of the whole business,
from which the following typical paragraph is extracted:--
"In the rout which followed, a war-chariot of the Chin State stuck in
a deep rut and could not get on. Thereupon a man of the Ch`u State
advised the charioteer to take out the stand for arms. This eased it a
little, but again the horses turned round. The man then advised that
the flagstaff should be taken out and used as a lever, and at last the
chariot was extracted. 'Ah,' said the charioteer to the man of Ch`u,
'we don't know so much about running away as the people of your worthy
State.'"
The /Tso Chuan/ contains several interesting passages on music, which
was regarded by Confucius as an important factor in the art of
government, recalling the well-known views of Plato in Book III. of
his /Republic/. Apropos of disease, we read that "the ancient rulers
regulated all things by music." Also that "the superior man will not
listen to lascivious or seductive airs;" "he addresses himself to his
lute in order to regulate his conduct, and not to delight his heart."
When the rabid old anti-foreign tutor of the late Emperor T`ung Chih
was denouncing the barbarians, and expressing a kindly desire to
"sleep on their skins," he was quoting the phraseology of the /Tso
Chuan/.
One hero, on going into battle, told his friends that he should only
hear the drum beating the signal to advance, for he would take good
care not to hear the gong sounding the retreat. Another made each of
his men carry into battle a long rope, seeing that the enemy all wore
their hair short. In a third case, where some men in possession of
boats were trying to prevent others from scrambling in, we are told
that the fingers of the assailants were chopped off in such large
numbers that they could be picked up in double handfuls.
Many maxims, practical and unpractical, are to be found scattered over
the /Tso Chuan/, such as, "One day's leniency to an enemy entails
trouble for many generations;" "Propriety forbids that a man should
profit himself at the expense of another;" "The receiver is as bad as
the thief;" "It is better to attack than to be attacked."
When the French fleet returned to Shanghai in 1885, after being
repulsed in a shore attack at Tamsui, a local wit at once adapted a
verse of doggerel found in the /Tso Chuan/:--
"See goggle-eyes and greedy-guts
Has left his shield among the ruts;
Back from the field, back from the field
He's brought his beard, but not his shield;"
and for days every Chinaman was muttering the refrain--
"Yü sai, yü sai
Ch`i chia fu lai."
There are two other commentaries on the Spring and Autumn, similar,
but generally regarded as inferior, to the /Tso Chuan/. They are by
KU-LIANG and KUNG-YANG, both of the fifth century B.C. The following
are specimens (Legge's translation, omitting unimportant details):--
Text.--"In spring, in the king's first month, the first day of the
moon, there fell stones in Sung--five of them. In the same month, six
fish-hawks flew backwards, past the capital of Sung."
The commentary of Ku-liang says, The commentary of Kung-yang says,
"Why does the text first say "How is it that the text first
'there fell,' and then 'stones'? says 'there fell,' and then
There was the falling, and then 'stones'?
the stones.
"'There fell stones' is a record
"In 'six fish-hawks flying of what was heard. There was heard
backwards past the capital of a noise of something falling. On
Sung,' the number is put first, looking at what had fallen, it was
indicating that the birds were seen to be stones. On examination
collected together. The language it was found there were five of
has respect to the seeing of the them.
eyes.
"Why does the text say 'six,' and
"The Master said, 'Stones are then 'fish-hawks'?
things without any intelligence,
and fish-hawks creatures that "'Six fish-hawks backwards flew'
have a little intelligence. The is a record of what was seen. When
stones, having no intelligence, they looked at the objects, there
are mentioned along with the day were six. When they examined them,
when they fell, and the fish- they were fish-hawks. When they
hawks, having a little examined them leisurely, they were
intelligence, are mentioned flying backwards."
along with the month when they
appeared. The superior man
(Confucius) even in regard to
such things and creatures
records nothing rashly. His
expressions about stones and
fish-hawks being thus exact, how
much more will they be so about
men!'"
Sometimes these commentaries are seriously at variance with that of
Tso. For instance, the text says that in B.C. 689 the ruler of the Chi
State "made a great end of his State." Tso's commentary explains the
words to mean that for various urgent reasons the ruler abdicated.
Kung-yang, however, takes quite a different view. He explains the
passage in the sense that the State in question was utterly destroyed,
the population being wiped out by the ruler of another State in
revenge for the death in B.C. 893 of an ancestor, who was boiled to
death at the feudal metropolis in consequence of a slander by a
contemporary ruler of the Chi State. It is important for candidates at
the public examinations to be familiar with these discrepancies, as
they are frequently called upon to "discuss" such points, always with
the object of establishing the orthodox and accepted interpretations.
The following episode is from Kung-yang's commentary, and is quite
different from the story told by Tso in reference to the same
passage:--
Text.--"In summer, in the 5th month, the Sung State made peace with
the Ch`u State.
"In B.C. 587 King Chuang of Ch`u was besieging the capital of Sung. He
had only rations for seven days, and if these were exhausted before he
could take the city, he meant to withdraw. He therefore sent his
general to climb the ramparts and spy out the condition of the
besieged. It chanced that at the same time an officer of the Sung army
came forth upon the ramparts, and the two met. 'How is your State
getting on?' inquired the general. 'Oh, badly,' replied the officer.
'We are reduced to exchanging children for food, and their bones are
chopped up for fuel.' 'That is bad indeed,' said the general; 'I had
heard, however, that the besieged, while feeding their horses with
bits in their mouths, kept some fat ones for exhibition to strangers.
What a spirit is yours!' To this the officer replied, 'I too have
heard that the superior man, seeing another's misfortune, is filled
with pity, while the ignoble man is filled with joy. And in you I
recognise the superior man; so I have told you our story.' 'Be of good
cheer,' said the general. 'We too have only seven days' rations, and
if we do not conquer you in that time, we shall withdraw.' He then
bowed, and retired to report to his master. The latter said, 'We must
now capture the city before we withdraw.' 'Not so,' replied the
general; 'I told the officer we had only rations for seven days.' King
Chuang was greatly enraged at this; but the general said, 'If a small
State like Sung has officers who speak the truth, should not the State
of Ch`u have such men also?' The king still wished to remain, but the
general threatened to leave him, and thus peace was brought about
between the two States."
CHAPTER III
THE FOUR BOOKS--MENCIUS
No Chinaman thinks of entering upon a study of the Five Classics until
he has mastered and committed to memory a shorter and simpler course
known as The Four Books.
The first of these, as generally arranged for students, is the /Lun
Yü/ or Analects, a work in twenty short chapters or books, retailing
the views of Confucius on a variety of subjects, and expressed so far
as possible in the very words of the Master. It tells us nearly all we
really know about the Sage, and may possibly have been put together
within a hundred years of his death. From its pages we seem to gather
some idea, a mere /silhouette/ perhaps, of the great moralist whose
mission on earth was to teach duty towards one's neighbour to his
fellowmen, and who formulated the Golden Rule: "What you would not
others should do unto you, do not unto them!"
It has been urged by many, who should know better, that the negative
form of this maxim is unfit to rank with the positive form as given to
us by Christ. But of course the two are logically identical, as may be
shown by the simple insertion of the word "abstain;" that is, you
would not that others should abstain from certain actions in regard to
yourself, which practically conveys the positive injunction.
When a disciple asked Confucius to explain charity of heart, he
replied simply, "Love one another." When, however, he was asked
concerning the principle that good should be returned for evil, as
already enunciated by Lao Tzu (see ch. iv.), he replied, "What then
will you return for good? No: return good for good; for evil,
justice."
He was never tired of emphasising the beauty and necessity of truth:
"A man without truthfulness! I know not how that can be."
"Let loyalty and truth be paramount with you."
"In mourning, it is better to be sincere than punctilious."
"Man is born to be upright. If he be not so, and yet live, he is lucky
to have escaped."
"Riches and honours are what men desire; yet except in accordance with
right these may not be enjoyed."
Confucius undoubtedly believed in a Power, unseen and eternal, whom he
vaguely addressed as Heaven: "He who has offended against Heaven has
none to whom he can pray." "I do not murmur against Heaven," and so
on. His greatest commentator, however, Chu Hsi, has explained that by
"Heaven" is meant "Abstract Right," and that interpretation is
accepted by Confucianists at the present day. At the same time,
Confucius strongly objected to discuss the supernatural, and suggested
that our duties are towards the living rather than towards the dead.
He laid the greatest stress upon filial piety, and taught that man is
absolutely pure at birth, and afterwards becomes depraved only because
of his environment.
Chapter x. of the /Lun Yü/ gives some singular details of the every-
day life and habits of the Sage, calculated to provoke a smile among
those with whom reverence for Confucius has not been a first principle
from the cradle upwards, but received with loving gravity by the
Chinese people at large. The following are extracts (Legge's
translation) from this famous chapter:--
"Confucius, in his village, looked simple and sincere, and as if he
were not able to speak. When he was in the prince's ancestral temple
or in the court, he spoke minutely on every point, but cautiously.
"When he entered the palace gate, he seemed to bend his body, as if it
were not sufficient to admit him.
"He ascended the daïs, holding up his robe with both his hands and his
body bent; holding in his breath also, as if he dared not breathe.
"When he was carrying the sceptre of his prince, he seemed to bend his
body as if he were not able to bear its weight.
"He did not use a deep purple or a puce colour in the ornaments of his
dress. Even in his undress he did not wear anything of a red or
reddish colour.
"He required his sleeping dress to be half as long again as his body.
"He did not eat rice which had been injured by heat or damp and turned
sour, nor fish or flesh which was gone. He did not eat what was
discoloured, or what was of a bad flavour, nor anything which was not
in season. He did not eat meat which was not cut properly, nor what
was served without its proper sauce.
"He was never without ginger when he ate. He did not eat much.
"When eating, he did not converse. When in bed, he did not speak.
"Although his food might be coarse rice and vegetable soup, he would
offer a little of it in sacrifice with a grave respectful air.
"If his mat was not straight, he did not sit on it.
"The stable being burned down when he was at Court, on his return he
said, 'Has any man been hurt?' He did not ask about the horses.
"When a friend sent him a present, though it might be a carriage and
horses, he did not bow. The only present for which he bowed was that
of the flesh of sacrifice.
"In bed, he did not lie like a corpse. At home, he did not put on any
formal deportment.
"When he saw any one in a mourning dress, though it might be an
acquaintance, he would change countenance; when he saw any one wearing
the cap of full dress, or a blind person, though he might be in his
undress, he would salute them in a ceremonious manner.
"When he was at an entertainment where there was an abundance of
provisions set before him, he would change countenance and rise up. On
a sudden clap of thunder or a violent wind, he would change
countenance."
Next in educational order follows the work briefly known as MENCIUS.
This consists of seven books recording the sayings and doings of a man
to whose genius and devotion may be traced the final triumph of
Confucianism. Born in B.C. 372, a little over a hundred years after
the death of the Master, Mencius was brought up under the care of his
widowed mother, whose name is a household word even at the present
day. As a child he lived with her at first near a cemetery, the result
being that he began to reproduce in play the solemn scenes which were
constantly enacted before his eyes. His mother accordingly removed to
another house near the market-place, and before long the little boy
forgot all about funerals and played at buying and selling goods. Once
more his mother disapproved, and once more she changed her dwelling;
this time to a house near a college, where he soon began to imitate
the ceremonial observances in which the students were instructed, to
the great joy and satisfaction of his mother.
Later on he studied under K`ung Chi, the grandson of Confucius; and
after having attained to a perfect apprehension of the roms or Way of
Confucius, became, at the age of about forty-five, Minister under
Prince Hsüan of the Ch`i State. But the latter would not carry out his
principles, and Mencius threw up his post. Thence he wandered away to
several States, advising their rulers to the best of his ability, but
making no very prolonged stay. He then visited Prince Hui of the Liang
State, and abode there until the monarch's death in B.C. 319. After
that event he returned to the State of Ch`i and resumed his old
position. In B.C. 311 he once more felt himself constrained to resign
office, and retired finally into private life, occupying himself
during the remainder of his days in teaching and in preparing the
philosophical record which now passes under his name. He lived at a
time when the feudal princes were squabbling over the rival systems of
federation and imperialism, and he vainly tried to put into practice
at an epoch of blood and iron the gentle virtues of the Golden Age.
His criterion was that of Confucius, but his teachings were on a lower
plane, dealing rather with man's well-being from the point of view of
political economy. He was therefore justly name4d by Chao Ch`i the
Second Holy One or Prophet, a title under which he is still known. He
was an uncompromising defender of the doctrines of Confucius, and he
is considered to have effectually "snuffed out" the heterodox schools
of Yang Chu and Mo Ti.
The following is a specimen of the logomachy of the day, in which
Mencius is supposed to have excelled. The subject is a favourite one--
human nature:--
"Kao Tzu said, 'Human nature may be compared with a block of wood;
duty towards one's neighbour, with a wooden bowl. To develop charity
and duty towards one's neighbour out of human nature is like making a
bowl out of a block of wood.'
"To this Mencius replied, 'Can you, without interfering with the
natural constitution of the wood, make out of it a bowl? Surely you
must do violence to that constitution in the process of making your
bowl. And by parity of reasoning you would do violence to human nature
in the process of developing charity and duty towards one's neighbour.
From which it follows that all men would come to regard these rather
as evils than otherwise.'
"Kao Tzu said, 'Human nature is like rushing water, which flows east
or west according as an outlet is made for it. For human nature makes
indifferently for good or for evil, precisely as water makes
indifferently for the east or for the west.'
"Mencius replied, 'Water will indeed flow indifferently towards the
east or west; but will it flow indifferently up or down? It will not;
and the tendency of human nature towards good is like the tendency of
water to flow down. Every man has this bias towards good, just as all
water flows naturally downwards. By splashing water, you may indeed
cause it to fly over your head; and by turning its course you may keep
it for use on the hillside; but you would hardly speak of such results
as the nature of water. They are the results, of course, of a /force
majeure/. And so it is when the nature of man is diverted towards
evil.'
"Kao Tzu said, 'That which comes with life is nature.'
"Mencius replied, 'Do you mean that there is such a thing as nature in
the abstract, just as there is whiteness in the abstract?'
"'I do,' answered Kao Tzu.
"'Just, for instance,' continued Mencius, 'as the whiteness of a
feather is the same as the whiteness of snow, or the whiteness of snow
as the whiteness of jade?'
"'I do,' answered Kao Tzu again.
"'In that case,' retorted Mencius, 'the nature of a dog is the same as
that of an ox, and the nature of an ox the same as that of a man.'
"Kao Tzu said, 'Eating and reproduction of the species are natural
instincts. Charity is subjective and innate; duty towards one's
neighbour is objective and acquired. For instance, there is a man who
is my senior, and I defer to him as such. Not because any abstract
principle of seniority exists subjectively in me, but in the same way
that if I see an albino, I recognise him as a white man because he is
so objectively to me. Consequently, I say that duty towards one's
neighbour is objective or acquired.'
"Mencius replied, 'The cases are not analogous. The whiteness of a
white horse is undoubtedly the same as the whiteness of a white man;
but the seniority of a horse is not the same as the seniority of a
man. Does our duty to our senior begin and end with the fact of his
seniority? Or does it not rather consist in the necessity of deferring
to him as such?'
"Kao Tzu said, 'I love my own brother, but I do not love another man's
brother. The distinction arises from within myself; therefore I call
it subjective or innate. But I defer to a stranger who is my senior,
just as I defer to a senior among my own people. The distinction comes
to me from without; therefore I call it objective or acquired.'
"Mencius retorted, 'We enjoy food cooked by strangers just as much as
food cooked by our own people. Yet extension of your principle lands
us in the conclusion that our appreciation of cooked food is also
objective and acquired.'"
The following is a well-known colloquy between Mencius and a sophist
of the day who tried to entangle the former in his talk:--
"The sophist inquired, saying, 'Is it a rule of social etiquette that
when men and women pass things from one to another they shall not
allow their hands to touch?'
"'That is the rule,' replied Mencius.
"'Now suppose,' continued the sophist, 'that a man's sister-in-law
were drowning, could he take hold of her hand and save her?'
"'Any one who did not do so,' said Mencius, 'would have the heart of a
wolf. That men and women when passing things from one to another may
not let their hands touch is a rule for general application. To save a
drowning sister-in-law by taking hold of her hand is altogether an
exceptional case.'"
The works of Mencius abound, like the Confucian Analects, in
sententious utterances. The following examples illustrate his general
bias in politics:--"The people are of the highest importance; the gods
come second; the sovereign is of lesser weight."
"Chieh and Chou lost the empire because they lost the people, which
means that they lost the confidence of the people. The way to gain the
people is to gain their confidence, and the way to do that is to
provide them with what they like and not with what they loathe."
This is how Mencius snuffed out the two heterodox philosophers
mentioned above:--
"The systems of Yang Chu and Mo Ti fill the whole empire. If a man is
not a disciple of the former, he is a disciple of the latter. But Yang
Chu's egoism excludes the claim of a sovereign, while Mo Ti's
universal altruism leaves out the claim of a father. And he who
recognises the claim of neither sovereign nor father is a brute
beast."
Yang Chu seems to have carried his egoism so far that even to benefit
the whole world he would not have parted with a single hair from his
body.
"The men of old knew that with life they had come but for a while, and
that with death they would shortly depart again. Therefore they
followed the desires of their own hearts, and did not deny themselves
pleasures to which they felt naturally inclined. Fame tempted them
not; but let by their instincts alone, they took such enjoyments as
lay in their path, not seeking for a name beyond the grave. They were
thus out of the reach of censure; while as for precedence among men,
or length or shortness of life, these gave them no concern whatever."
Mo Ti, on the other hand, showed that under the altruistic system all
calamities which men bring upon one another would altogether
disappear, and that the peace and happiness of the Golden Age would be
renewed.
In the /Ta Hsüeh/, or Great Learning, which forms Sect. xxxix. of the
Book of Rites, and really means learning for adults, we have a short
politico-ethical treatise, the authorship of which is unknown, but is
usually attributed partly to Confucius, and partly to TSÊNG TS`AN, one
of the most famous of his disciples. In the former portion there
occurs the following well-known climax:--
"The men of old, in their desire to manifest great virtue throughout
the empire, began with good government in the various States. To
achieve this, it was necessary first to order aright their own
families, which in turn was preceded by cultivation of their own
selves, and that again by rectification of the heart, following upon
sincerity of purpose which comes from extension of knowledge, this
last being derived from due investigation of objective existences."
One more short treatise, known as the /Chung Yung/, which forms Ch.
xxviii. of the Book of Rites, brings us to the end of the Four Books.
Its title has been translated in various ways.[1] Julien rendered the
term by "L'Invariable Milieu," Legge by "The Doctrine of the Mean."
Its authorship is assigned to K`UNG CHI, grandson of Confucius. He
seems to have done little more than enlarge upon certain general
principles of his grandfather in relation to the nature of man and
right conduct upon earth. He seizes the occasion to pronounce an
impassioned eulogism upon Confucius, concluding with the following
words:--
[1] /Chung/ means "middle," and /Yung/ means "course," the former
being defined by the Chinese as "that which is without deflection
or bias," the latter as "that which never varies in its
direction."
"Therefore his fame overflows the Middle Kingdom, and reaches the
barbarians of north and south. Wherever ships and waggons can go, or
the strength of man penetrate; wherever there is heaven above and
earth below; wherever the sun and moon shed their light, or frosts or
dews fall,--all who have blood and breath honour and love him.
Wherefore it may be said that he is the peer of God."
CHAPTER IV
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS
Names of the authors who belong to this period, B.C. 600 to B.C. 200,
and of the works on a variety of subjects attributed to them, would
fill a long list. Many of the latter have disappeared, and others are
gross forgeries, chiefly of the first and second centuries of our era,
an epoch which, curiously enough, is remarkable for a similar wave of
forgery on the other side of the world. As to the authors, it will be
seen later on that the Chinese even went so far as to create some of
these for antiquity and then write up treatises to match.
There was SUN TZU of the 6th century B.C. He is said to have written
the /Ping Fa/, or Art of War, in thirteen sections, whereby hangs a
strange tale. When he was discoursing one day with Prince Ho-lu of the
Wu State, the latter said, "I have read your book and want to know if
you could apply its principles to women." Sun Tzu replied in the
affirmative, whereupon the Prince took 180 girls out of his harem and
bade Sun Tzu deal with them as with troops. Accordingly he divided
them into two companies, and at the head of each placed a favourite
concubine of the Prince. But when the drums sounded for drill to
begin, all the girls burst out laughing. Thereupon Sun Tzu, without a
moment's delay, caused the two concubines in command to be beheaded.
This at once restored order, and ultimately the corps was raised to a
state of great efficiency.
The following is an extract from the Art of War:--
"If soldiers are not carefully chosen and well drilled to obey, their
movements will be irregular. They will not act in concert. They will
miss success for want of unanimity. Their retreat will be disorderly,
one half fighting while the other is running away. They will not
respond to the call of the gong and drum. One hundred such as these
will not hold their own against ten well-drilled men.
"If their arms are not good, the soldiers might as well have none. If
the cuirass is not stout and close set, the breast might as well be
bare. Bows that will not carry are no more use at long distances than
swords and spears. Bad marksmen might as well have no arrows. Even
good marksmen, unless able to make their arrows pierce, might as well
shoot with headless shafts. These are the oversights of incompetent
generals. Five such soldiers are no match for one."
It is notwithstanding very doubtful if we have any genuine remains of
either Sun Tzu, or of Kuan Tzu, Wu Tzu, Wên Tzu, and several other
early writers on war, political philosophy, and cognate subjects. The
same remark applies equally to Chinese medical literature, the bulk of
which is enormous, some of it nominally dating back to legendary
times, but always failing to stand the application of the simplest
test.
The /Erh Ya/, or Nearing the Standard, is a work which has often been
assigned to the 12th century B.C. It is a guide to the correct use of
many miscellaneous terms, including names of animals, birds, plants,
etc., to which are added numerous illustrations. It was first edited
with commentary by Kuo P`o, of whom we shall read later on, and some
Chinese critics would have us believe that the illustrations we now
possess were then already in existence. But the whole question is
involved in mystery. The following will give an idea of the text:--
"For metal we say /lou/ (to chase); for wood /k`o/ (to carve); for
bone /ch`ieh/ (to cut)," etc., etc.
There are some interesting remains of a writer named T`AN KUNG, who
flourished in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C., and whose work has been
included in the Book of Rites. The three following extracts will give
an idea of his scope:--
1. "One day Yu-tzu and Tzu-yu saw a child weeping for the loss of its
parents. Thereupon the former observed, 'I never could understand why
mourners should necessarily jump about to show their grief, and would
long ago have gotten rid of the custom. Now here you have an honest
expression of feeling, and that is all there should ever be.'
"'My friend,' replied Tzu-yu, 'the mourning ceremonial, with all its
material accompaniments, is at once a check upon undue emotion and a
guarantee against any lack of proper respect. Simply to give vent to
the feelings is the way of barbarians. That is not our way.
"'Consider. A man who is pleased will show it in his face. He will
sing. He will get excited. He will dance. So, too, a man who is vexed
will look sad. He will sigh. He will beat his breast. He will jump
about. The due regulation of these emotions is the function of a set
ceremonial.
"'Further. A man dies and becomes an object of loathing. A dead body
is shunned. Therefore, a shroud is prepared, and other paraphernalia
of burial, in order that the survivors may cease to loathe. At death
there is a sacrifice of wine and meat; when the funeral cortège is
about to start, there is another; and after burial there is yet
another. Yet no one ever saw the spirit of the departed come to taste
of the food.
"'These have been our customs from remote antiquity. They have not
been discarded, because, in consequence, men no more shun the dead.
What you may censure in those who perform the ceremonial is no blemish
in the ceremonial itself.'"
2. "When Tzu-chü died, his wife and secretary took counsel together as
to who should be interred with him. All was settled before the arrival
of his brother, Tzu-hêng; and then they informed him, saying, 'The
deceased requires some one to attend upon him in the nether world. We
must ask you to go down with his body into the grave.' 'Burial of the
living with the dead,' replied Tzu-hêng, 'is not in accordance with
established rites. Still, as you say some one is wanted to attend upon
the deceased, who better fitted than his wife and secretary? If this
contingency can be avoided altogether, I am willing; if not, then the
duty will devolve upon you two.' From that time forth the custom fell
into desuetude."
3. "When Confucius was crossing the T`ai mountain, he overheard a
woman weeping and wailing beside a grave. He thereupon sent one of his
disciples to ask what was the matter; and the latter addressed the
woman, saying, 'Some great sorrow must have come upon you that you
give way to grief like this?' 'Indeed it is so,' replied she. 'My
father-in-law was killed here by a tiger; after that, my husband; and
now my son has perished by the same death.' 'But why, then,' inquired
Confucius, 'do you not go away?' 'The government is not harsh,'
answered the woman. 'There!' cried the Master, turning to his
disciples; 'remember that. Bad government is worse than a tiger.'"
The philosopher HSÜN TZU of the 3rd century B.C. is widely known for
his heterodox views on the nature of man, being directly opposed to
the Confucian doctrine so warmly advocated by Mencius. The following
passage, which hardly carries conviction, contains the gist of his
argument:--
"By nature, man is evil. If man is good, that is an artificial result.
For his condition being what it is, he is influenced first of all by a
desire for gain. Hence he strives to get all he can without
consideration for his neighbour. Secondly, he is liable to envy and
hate. Hence he seeks the ruin of others, and loyalty and truth are set
aside. Thirdly, he is a slave to his animal passions. Hence he commits
excesses, and wanders from the path of duty and right.
"Thus, conformity with man's natural disposition leads to all kinds of
violence, disorder, and ultimate barbarism. Only under the restraint
of law and of lofty moral influences does man eventually become fit to
be a member of regularly organised society.
"From these premises it seems quite clear that by nature man is evil;
and that if a man is good, that is an artificial result."
The /Hsiao Ching/, or Classic of Filial Piety, is assigned partly to
Confucius and partly to TSÊNG TS`AN, though it more probably belongs
to a very much later date. Considering that filial piety is admittedly
the keystone of Chinese civilisation, it is disappointing to find
nothing more on the subject than a poor pamphlet of commonplace and
ill-strung sentences, which gives the impression of having been
written to fill a void. One short extract will suffice:--
"The Master said, 'There are three thousand offences against which the
five punishments are directed, and there is not one of them greater
than being unfilial.
"'When constraint is put upon a ruler, that is the disowning of his
superiority; when the authority of the sages is disallowed, that is
the disowning of all law; when filial piety is put aside, that is the
disowning of the principle of affection. These three things pave the
way to anarchy.'"
The /Chia Yü/, or Family Sayings of Confucius, is a work with a
fascinating title, which has been ascribed by some to the immediate
disciples of Confucius, but which, as it now exists, is usually
thought by native scholars to have been composed by Wang Su, a learned
official who died A.D. 256. There appears to have been an older work
under this same title, but how far the later work is indebted to it,
or based upon it, seems likely to remain unknown.
Another discredited work is the /Lü Shih Ch`un Ch`iu/, or Spring and
Autumn of LÜ PU-WEI, who died B.C. 235 and was the putative sire of
the First Emperor (see ch. vii.). It contains a great deal about the
early history of China, some of which is no doubt based upon fact.
Lastly, among spurious books may be mentioned the /Mu T`ien Tzu
Chuan/, an account of a mythical journey by a sovereign of the Chou
dynasty, supposed to have been taken about 1000 B.C. The sovereign is
unfortunately spoken of by his posthumous title, and the work was
evidently written up in the 3rd century A.D. to suit a statement found
in Lieh Tzu (see chapter vi.) to the effect that the ruler in question
did make some such journey to the West.
CHAPTER V
POETRY--INSCRIPTIONS
The poetry which is representative of the period between the death of
Confucius and the 2nd century B.C. is a thing apart. There is nothing
like it in the whole range of Chinese literature. It illumines many a
native pronouncement on the poetic art, the drift of which would
otherwise remain obscure. For poetry has been defined by the Chinese
as "emotion expressed in words," a definition perhaps not more
inadequate than Wordsworth's "impassioned expression." "Poetry," they
say, "knows no law." And again, "The men of old reckoned it the
highest excellence in poetry that the meaning should lie beyond the
words, and that the reader should have to think it out." Of these
three canons only the last can be said to have survived to the present
day. But in the fourth century B.C., Ch`ü Yüan and his school indulged
in wild irregular metres which consorted well with their wild
irregular thoughts. Their poetry was prose run mad. It was allusive
and allegorical to a high degree, and now, but for the commentary,
much of it would be quite unintelligible.
CH`Ü YÜAN is the type of a loyal Minister. He enjoyed the full
confidence of his Prince until at length the jealousies and intrigues
of rivals sapped his position in the State. Then it was that he
composed the /Li Sao/, or Falling into Trouble, the first section of
which extends to nearly 400 lines. Beginning from the birth of the
writer, it describes his cultivation of virtue and his earnest
endeavour to translate precept into practice. Discouraged by failure,
he visits the grave of the Emperor Shun (chapter ii.), and gives
himself up to prayer, until at length a phœnix-car and dragons appear,
and carry him in search of his ideal away beyond the domain of
mortality,--the chariot of the Sun moving slowly to light him longer
on the way, the Moon leading and the Winds bringing up the rear,--up
to the very palace of God. Unable to gain admission there, he seeks
out a famous musician, who counsels him to stand firm and to continue
his search; whereupon, surrounded by gorgeous clouds and dazzling
rainbows, and amid the music of tinkling ornaments attached to his
car, he starts from the Milky Way, and passing the Western Pole,
reaches the sources of the Yellow River. Before long he is once again
in sight of his native land, but without having discovered the object
of his search.
Overwhelmed by further disappointments, and sinking still more deeply
into disfavour, so that he cared no longer to live, he went forth to
the banks of the Mi-lo river. There he met a fisherman who accosted
him, saying, "Are you not his Excellency the Minister? What has
brought you to this pass?" "The world," replied Ch`ü Yüan, "is foul,
and I alone am clean. There they are all drunk, while I alone am
sober. So I am dismissed." "Ah!" said the fisherman, "the true sage
does not quarrel with his environment, but adapts himself to it. If,
as you say, the world is foul, why not leap into the tide and make it
clean? If all men are drunk, why not drink with them and teach them to
avoid excess?" After some further colloquy, the fisherman rowed away;
and Ch`ü Yüan, clasping a large stone in his arms, plunged into the
river and was seen no more. This took place on the fifth of the fifth
moon; and ever afterwards the people of Ch`u commemorated the day by
an annual festival, when offerings of rice in bamboo tubes were cast
into the river as a sacrifice to the spirit of their great hero. Such
is the origin of the modern Dragon-Boat Festival, which is supposed to
be a search for the body of Ch`ü Yüan.
A good specimen of his style will be found in the following short
poem, entitled "The Genius of the Mountain." It is one of "nine songs"
which, together with a number of other pieces in a similar strain,
have been classed under the general heading, /Li Sao/, as above.
"Methinks there is a Genius of the hills, clad in wistaria, girdled
with ivy, with smiling lips, of witching mien, riding on the red pard,
wild cats galloping in the rear, reclining in a chariot, with banners
of cassia, cloaked with the orchid, girt with azalea, culling the
perfume of sweet flowers to leave behind a memory in the heart. But
dark is the grove wherein I dwell. No light of day reaches it ever.
The path thither is dangerous and difficult to climb. Alone I stand on
the hill-top, while the clouds float beneath my feet, and all around
is wrapped in gloom.
"Gently blows the east wind; softly falls the rain. In my joy I become
oblivious of home; for who in my decline would honour me now?
"I pluck the larkspur on the hillside, amid the chaos of rock and
tangled vine. I hate him who has made me an outcast, who has now no
leisure to think of me.
"I drink from the rocky spring. I shade myself beneath the spreading
pine. Even though he were to recall me to him, I could not fall to the
level of the world.
"Now booms the thunder through the drizzling rain. The gibbons howl
around me all the long night. The gale rushes fitfully through the
whispering trees. And I am thinking of my Prince, but in vain; for I
cannot lay my grief."
Another leading poet of the day was SUNG YÜ, of whom we know little
beyond the fact that he was nephew of Ch`ü Yüan, and like his uncle
both a statesman and a poet. The following extract exhibits him in a
mood not far removed from the lamentations of the /Li Sao/:--
"Among birds the phœnix, among fishes the leviathan
hold the chiefest place;
Cleaving the crimson clouds
the phœnix soars apace,
With only the blue sky above,
far into the realms of space;
But the grandeur of heaven and earth
is as naught to the hedge-sparrow race.
And the leviathan rises in one ocean
to go to rest in a second,
While the depth of a puddle by a humble minnow
as the depth of the sea is reckoned.
And just as with birds and with fishes,
so too it is with man;
Here soars a phœnix,
there swims a leviathan . . .
Behold the philosopher, full of nervous thought,
with a flame that never grows dim,
Dwelling complacently alone;
say, what can the vulgar herd know of him?"
As has been stated above, the poems of this school are irregular in
metre; in fact, they are only approximately metrical. The poet never
ends his line in deference to a prescribed number of feet, but
lengthens or shortens to suit the exigency of his thought. Similarly,
he may rhyme or he may not. The reader, however, is never conscious of
any want of art, carried away as he is by flow of language and rapid
succession of poetical imagery.
Several other poets, such as Chia I and Tung-fang So, who cultivated
this particular vein, but on a somewhat lower plane, belong to the
second century B.C., thus overlapping a period which must be regarded
as heralding the birth of a new style rather than occupied with the
passing of the old.
It may be here mentioned that many short pieces of doubtful age and
authorship--some few unquestionably old--have been rescued by Chinese
scholars from various sources, and formed into convenient collections.
Of such is a verse known as "Yao's Advice," Yao being the legendary
monarch mentioned in chapter ii., who is associated with Shun in
China's Golden Age:--
"With trembling heart and cautious steps
Walk daily in fear of God . . .
Though you never trip over a mountain,
You may often trip over a clod."
There is also the husbandman's song, which enlarges upon the national
happiness of those halcyon days:--
"Work, work;--from the rising sun
Till sunset comes and the day is done
I plough the sod
And harrow the clod,
And meat and drink both come to me,
So what care I for the powers that be?"
It seems to have been customary in early days to attach inscriptions,
poetical and otherwise, to all sorts of articles for daily use. In the
bath-tub of T`ang, founder of the Shang dynasty in B.C. 1766, there
was said to have been written these words:--"If any one on any one day
can make a new man of himself, let him do so every day." Similarly, an
old metal mirror bore as its legend, "Man combs his hair every
morning: why not his heart?" And the following lines are said to be
taken from an ancient wash-basin:--
"Oh, rather than sink in the world's foul tide
I would sink in the bottomless main;
For he who sinks in the world's foul tide
In noisome depths shall for ever abide,
But he who sinks in the bottomless main
May hope to float to the surface again."
In this class of verse, too, the metre is often irregular and the
rhyme is a mere jingle, according to the canons of the stricter
prosody which came into existence later on.
CHAPTER VI
The reader is now asked to begin once more at the sixth century B.C.
So far we have dealt almost exclusively with what may be called
orthodox literature, that is to say, of or belonging to or based upon
the Confucian Canon. It seemed advisable to get that well off our
hands before entering upon another branch, scarcely indeed as
important, but much more difficult to handle. This branch consists of
the literature of Taoism, or that which has gathered around what is
known as the Tao or Way of LAO TZU, growing and flourishing alongside
of, though in direct antagonism to, that which is founded upon the
criteria and doctrines of Confucius. Unfortunately it is quite
impossible to explain at the outset in what this Tao actually
consists. According to Lao Tzu himself, "Those who know do not tell;
those who tell do not know." It is hoped, however, that by the time
the end of this chapter is reached, some glimmering of the meaning of
Tao may have reached the minds of those who have been patient enough
to follow the argument.
Lao Tzu was born, according to the weight of evidence, in the year
B.C. 604. Omitting all reference to the supernatural phenomena which
attended his birth and early years, it only remains to say that we
really know next to nothing about him. There is a short biography of
Lao Tzu to be found in the history of Ssu-ma Ch`ien, to be dealt with
in Book II., chapter iii., but internal evidence points to embroidery
laid on by other hands. Just as it was deemed necessary by pious
enthusiasts to interpolate in the work of Josephus a passage referring
to Christ, so it would appear that the original note by Ssu-ma Ch`ien
has been carefully touched up to suit the requirements of an
unauthenticated meeting between Lao Tzu and Confucius, which has been
inserted very much /à propos de bottes/; the more so, as Confucius is
made to visit Lao Tzu with a view to information on Rites, a subject
which Lao Tzu held in very low esteem. This biography ends with the
following extraordinary episode:--
"Lao Tzu abode for a long time in Chou, but when he saw that the State
showed signs of decay, he left. On reaching the frontier, the Warden,
named Yin Hsi, said to him, 'So you are going into retirement. I beg
you to write a book for me.' Thereupon Lao Tzu wrote a book, in two
parts, on Tao and Tê,[1] extending to over 5000 words. He then went
away, and no one knows where he died."
[1] Tê is the exemplification of Tao.
It is clear from Ssu-ma Ch`ien's account that he himself had never
seen the book, though a dwindling minority still believe that we
possess that book in the well-known /Tao-Tê-Ching/.
It must now be stated that throughout what are generally believed to
be the writings of Confucius the name of Lao Tzu is never once
mentioned.[1] It is not mentioned by Tso of the famous commentary, nor
by the editors of the Confucian Analects, nor by Tsêng Ts`an, nor by
Mencius. Chuang Tzu, who devoted all his energies to the exposition
and enforcement of the teaching of Lao Tzu, never once drops even a
hint that his Master had written a book. In his work will now be found
an account of the meeting of Confucius and Lao Tzu, but it has long
since been laughed out of court as a pious fraud by every competent
Chinese critic. Chu Hsi, Shên Jo-shui, and many others, declare
emphatically against the genuineness of the /Tao-Tê-Ching/; and scant
allusion would indeed have been made to it here, were it not for the
attention paid to it by several more or less eminent foreign students
of the language. It is interesting as a collection of many genuine
utterances of Lao Tzu, sandwiched however between thick wads of
padding from which little meaning can be extracted except by
enthusiasts who curiously enough disagree absolutely among themselves.
A few examples from the real Lao Tzu will now be given:--
[1] The name Lao Tan occurs in four passages in the Book of Rites, but
we are expressly told that by it is not meant the philosopher Lao
Tzu.
"The Way (Tao) which can be walked upon is not the eternal Way."
"Follow diligently the Way in your own heart, but make no display of
it to the world."
"By many words wit is exhausted; it is better to preserve a mean."
"To the good I would be good. To the not-good I would also be good, in
order to make them good."
"Recompense injury with kindness."
"Put yourself behind, and you shall be put in front."
"Abandon wisdom and discard knowledge, and the people will be
benefited an hundredfold."
These last maxims are supposed to illustrate Lao Tzu's favourite
doctrine of doing nothing, or, as it has been termed, Inaction, a
doctrine inseparably associated with his name, and one which has ever
exerted much fascination over the more imaginative of his countrymen.
It was openly enunciated as follows:--
"Do nothing, and all things will be done."
"I do nothing, and the people become good of their own accord."
To turn to the padding, as rendered by the late Drs. Chalmers and
Legge, we may take a paragraph which now passes as chapter vi.:--
CHALMERS:--"The Spirit (like perennial spring) of the valley never
dies. This (Spirit) I call the abyss-mother. The passage of the abyss-
mother I call the root of heaven and earth. Ceaselessly it seems to
endure, and it is employed without effort."
LEGGE:--"The valley spirit does not, aye the same;
The female mystery thus do we name.
Its gate, from which at first they issued forth,
Is called the root from which grew heaven and earth.
Long and unbroken does its power remain,
Used gently, and without the touch of pain."
One more example from Chalmers' translation will perhaps seal the fate
of this book with readers who claim at least a minimum of sense from
an old-world classic.
"Where water abides, it is good for adaptability.
In its heart, it is good for depth.
In giving, it is good for benevolence.
In speaking, it is good for fidelity."
That there was such a philosopher as Lao Tzu who lived about the time
indicated, and whose sayings have come down to us first by tradition
and later by written and printed record, cannot possibly be doubted.
The great work of Chuang Tzu would be sufficient to establish this
beyond cavil, while at the same time it forms a handy guide to a
nearer appreciation of this elusive Tao.
CHUANG TZU was born in the fourth century B.C., and held a petty
official post. "He wrote," says the historian Ssu-ma Ch`ien, "with a
view to asperse the Confucian school and to glorify the mysteries of
Lao Tzu. . . . His teachings are like an overwhelming flood, which
spreads at its own sweet will. Consequently, from rulers and ministers
downwards, none could apply them to any definite use."
Here we have the key to the triumph of the Tao of Confucius over the
Tao of Lao Tzu. The latter was idealistic, the former a practical
system for everyday use. And Chuang Tzu was unable to persuade the
calculating Chinese nation that by doing nothing, all things would be
done. But he bequeathed to posterity a work which, by reason of its
marvellous literary beauty, has always held a foremost place. It is
also a work of much originality of thought. The writer, it is true,
appears chiefly as a disciple insisting upon the principles of a
Master. But he has contrived to extend the field, and carry his own
speculations into regions never dreamt of by Lao Tzu.
The whole work of Chuang Tzu has not come down to us, neither can all
that now passes under his name be regarded as genuine. Alien hands
have added, vainly indeed, many passages and several entire chapters.
But a sable robe, says the Chinese proverb, cannot be eked out with
dogs' tails. Lin Hsi-chung, a brilliant critic of the seventeenth
century, to whose edition all students should turn, has shown with
unerring touch where the lion left off and the jackals began.
The honour of the first edition really belongs to a volatile spirit of
the third century A.D., named Hsiang Hsiu. He was probably the
founder, at any rate a member, of a small club of bibulous poets who
called themselves the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. Death, however,
interrupted his labours before he had finished his work on Chuang Tzu,
and the manuscript was purloined by Kuo Hsiang, a scholar who died in
A.D. 312 and with some additions was issued by the latter as his own.
Before attempting to illustrate by extracts the style and scope of
Chuang Tzu, it will be well to collect from his work a few passages
dealing with the attributes of Tao. In his most famous chapter,
entitled Autumn Floods, a name by which he himself is sometimes spoken
of, Chuang Tzu writes as follows:--
"Tao is without beginning, without end." Elsewhere he says, "There is
nowhere where it is not." "Tao cannot be heard; heard, it is not Tao.
Tao cannot be seen; seen, it is not Tao. Tao cannot be spoken; spoken,
it is not Tao. That which imparts form to forms is itself formless;
therefore Tao cannot have a name (as form precedes name)."
"Tao is not too small for the greatest, nor too great for the
smallest. Thus all things are embosomed therein; wide, indeed, its
boundless capacity, unfathomable its depth."
"By no thoughts, by no cogitations, Tao may be known. By resting in
nothing, by according in nothing, Tao may be approached. By following
nothing, by pursuing nothing, Tao may be attained."
In these and many like passages Lao Tzu would have been in full
sympathy with his disciple. So far as it is possible to deduce
anything definite from the scanty traditions of the teachings of Lao
Tzu, we seem to obtain this, that man should remain impassive under
the operation of an eternal, omnipresent law (Tao), and that thus he
will become in perfect harmony with his environment, and that if he is
in harmony with his environment, he will thereby attain to a vague
condition of general immunity. Beyond this the teachings of Lao Tzu
would not carry us. Chuang Tzu, however, from simple problems, such as
a drunken man falling out of a cart and not injuring himself--a common
superstition among sailors--because he is unconscious and therefore in
harmony with his environment, slides easily into an advanced
mysticism. In his marvellous chapter on the Identity of Contraries, he
maintains that from the standpoint of Tao all things are One. Positive
and negative, right and wrong, vertical and horizontal, subjective and
objective, become indistinct, as water is in water. "When subjective
and objective are both without their correlates, that is the very axis
of Tao. And when that axis passes through the centre at which all
Infinities converge, positive and negative alike blend into an
infinite One." This localisation in a Centre, and this infinite
absolute represented by One, were too concrete even for Chuang Tzu.
The One became God, and the Centre, assigned by later Taoist writers
to the pole-star (see Book IV. ch. i.), became the source of all life
and the haven to which such life returned after its transitory stay on
earth. By ignoring the distinctions of contraries "we are embraced in
the obliterating unity of God. Take no heed of time, nor of right and
wrong; but passing into the realm of the Infinite, make your final
rest therein."
That the idea of an indefinite future state was familiar to the mind
of Chuang Tzu may be gathered from many passages such as the
following:--
"How then do I know but that the dead repent of having previously
clung to life?
"Those who dream of the banquet, wake to lamentation and sorrow. Those
who dream of lamentation and sorrow, wake to join the hunt. While they
dream, they do not know that they dream. Some will even interpret the
very dream they are dreaming; and only when they awake do they know it
was a dream. By and by comes the Great Awakening, and then we find out
that this life is really a great dream. Fools think they are awake
now, and flatter themselves they know if they are really princes or
peasants. Confucius and you are both dreams; and I who say you are
dreams,--I am but a dream myself."
The chapter closes with a paragraph which has gained for its writer an
additional epithet, Butterfly Chuang:--
"Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering
hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was
conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was
unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awaked, and
there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man
dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I
am a man."
Chuang Tzu is fond of paradox. He delights in dwelling on the
usefulness of useless things. He shows that ill-grown or inferior
trees are allowed to stand, that diseased pigs are not killed for
sacrifice, and that a hunchback can not only make a good living by
washing, for which a bent body is no drawback, but escapes the dreaded
press-gang in time of war.
With a few illustrative extracts we must now take leave of Chuang Tzu,
a writer who, although heterodox in the eyes of a Confucianist, has
always been justly esteemed for his pointed wit and charming style.
(1.) "It was the time of autumn floods. Every stream poured into the
river, which swelled in its turbid course. The banks receded so far
from one another that it was impossible to tell a cow from a horse.
"Then the Spirit of the River laughed for joy that all the beauty of
the earth was gathered to himself. Down with the stream he journeyed
east, until he reached the ocean. There, looking eastwards and seeing
no limit to its waves, his countenance changed. And as he gazed over
the expanse, he sighed and said to the Spirit of the Ocean, 'A vulgar
proverb says, that he who has heard but part of the truth thinks no
one equal to himself. And such a one am I.
"'When formerly I heard people detracting from the learning of
Confucius, or underrating the heroism of Po I, I did not believe. But
now that I have looked upon your inexhaustibility--alas for me had I
not reached your abode, I should have been for ever a laughing-stock
to those of comprehensive enlightenment!'
"To which the Spirit of the Ocean replied, 'You cannot speak of ocean
to a well-frog,--the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak
of ice to a summer-insect,--the creature of a season. You cannot speak
of Tao to a pedagogue: his scope is too restricted. But now that you
have emerged from your narrow sphere and have seen the great ocean,
you know your own insignificance, and I can speak to you of great
principles.'"
(2.) "Have you never heard of the frog in the old well?--The frog said
to the turtle of the eastern sea, 'Happy indeed am I! I hop on to the
rail around the well. I rest in the hollow of some broken brick.
Swimming, I gather the water under my arms and shut my mouth. I plunge
into the mud, burying my feet and toes; and not one of the cockles,
crabs, or tadpoles I see around me are my match. [Fancy pitting the
happiness of an old well, ejaculates Chuang Tzu, against all the water
of Ocean!] Why do you not come, sir, and pay me a visit?'[1]
[1] "To the minnow, every cranny and pebble and quality and accident
of its little native creek may have become familiar; but does the
minnow understand the ocean tides and periodic currents, the
trade-winds, and monsoons, and moon's eclipses . . . ?"--/Sartor
Resartus/, Natural Supernaturalism.
"Now the turtle of the eastern sea had not got its left leg down ere
its right had already stuck fast, so it shrank back and begged to be
excused. It then described the sea, saying, 'A thousand /li/ would not
measure its breadth, nor a thousand fathoms its depth. In the days of
the Great Yü, there were nine years of flood out of ten; but this did
not add to its bulk. In the days of T`ang, there were seven years out
of eight of drought; but this did not narrow its span. Not to be
affected by duration of time, not to be affected by volume of water,--
such is the great happiness of the eastern sea.'
"At this the well-frog was considerably astonished, and knew not what
to say next. And for one whose knowledge does not reach to the
positive-negative domain, to attempt to understand me, Chuang Tzu, is
like a mosquito trying to carry a mountain, or an ant to swim a river,
--they cannot succeed."
(3.) "Chuang Tzu was fishing in the P`u when the prince of Ch`u sent
two high officials to ask him to take charge of the administration of
the Ch`u State.
"Chuang Tzu went on fishing, and without turning his head said, 'I
have heard that in Ch`u there is a sacred tortoise which has been dead
now some three thousand 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,' replied the two officials, 'and wagging
its tail in the mud.'
"'Begone!' cried Chuang Tzu. 'I too will wag my tail in the mud.'"
(4.) "Chuang Tzu one day saw an empty skull, bleached, but still
preserving its shape. Striking it with his riding whip, he said, 'Wert
thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought
him to this pass?--some statesman who plunged his country in ruin, and
perished in the fray?--some wretch who left behind him a legacy of
shame?--some beggar who died in the pangs of hunger and cold? Or didst
thou reach this state by the natural course of old age?'
"When he had finished speaking, he took the skull, and placing it
under his head as a pillow, went to sleep. In the night he dreamt that
the skull appeared to him, and said, 'You speak well, sir; but all you
say has reference to the life of mortals, and to mortal troubles. In
death there are none of these. Would you like to hear about death?'
"Chuang Tzu having replied in the affirmative, the skull began:--'In
death, there is no sovereign above, and no subject below. The workings
of the four seasons are unknown. Our existences are bound only by
eternity. the happiness of a king among men cannot exceed that which
we enjoy.'
"Chuang Tzu, however, was not convinced, and said, 'Were I to prevail
upon God to allow your body to be born again, and your bones and flesh
to be renewed, so that you could return to your parents, to your wife,
and to the friends of your youth--would you be willing?'
"At this, the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and
said, 'How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king,
and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality?'"
(5.) "The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the
shambles and thus addressed the pigs:--
"'How can you object to die? I shall fatten you for three months. I
shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew
fine grass, and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does
not this satisfy you?'
"Then speaking from the pigs' point of view, he continued, 'It is
better perhaps after all to live on bran and escape the
shambles. . . .'
"'But then,' added he, speaking from his own point of view, 'to enjoy
honour when alive one would readily die on a war-shield or in the
headsman's basket.'
"So he rejected the pigs' point of view and adopted his own point of
view. In what sense then was he different from the pigs?"
(6.) "When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples expressed a wish
to give him a splendid funeral. But Chuang Tzu said, 'With heaven and
earth for my coffin and shell, with the sun, moon, and stars as my
burial regalia, and with all creation to escort me to the grave,--are
not my funeral paraphernalia ready to hand?'
"'We fear,' argued the disciples, 'lest the carrion kite should eat
the body of our Master'; to which Chuang Tzu replied, 'Above ground I
shall be food for kites, below I shall be food for mole-crickets and
ants. Why rob one to feed the other?'"
The works of LIEH TZU, in two thin volumes, may be procured at any
Chinese book-shop. These volumes profess to contain the writings of a
Taoist philosopher who flourished some years before Chuang Tzu, and
for a long time they received considerable attention at the hands of
European students, into whose minds no suspicion of their real
character seems to have found its way. Gradually the work came to be
looked upon as doubtful, then spurious; and now it is known to be a
forgery, possibly of the first or second century A.D. The scholar--for
he certainly was one--who took the trouble to forge this work, was
himself the victim of a strange delusion. He thought that Lieh Tzu, to
whom Chuang Tzu devotes a whole chapter, had been a live philosopher
of flesh and blood. But he was in reality nothing more than a figment
of the imagination, like many others of Chuang Tzu's characters,
though his name was less broadly allegorical than those of All-in-
Extremes, and of Do-Nothing-Say-Nothing, and others. The book
attributed to him is curious enough to deserve attention. It is on a
lower level of thought and style than the work of Chuang Tzu; still,
it contains much traditional matter and many allusions not found
elsewhere. To its author we owe the famous, but of course apocryphal,
story of Confucius meeting two boys quarrelling about the distance of
the sun from the earth. One of them said that at dawn the sun was much
larger than at noon, and must consequently be much nearer; but the
other retorted that at noon the sun was much hotter, and therefore
nearer than at dawn. Confucius confessed himself unable to decide
between them, and was jeered at by the boys as an impostor. But of all
this work perhaps the most attractive portion is a short story on
Dream and Reality:--
"A man of the State of Chêng was one day gathering fuel, when he came
across a startled deer, which he pursued and killed. Fearing lest any
one should see him, he hastily concealed the carcass in a ditch and
covered it with plantain leaves, rejoicing excessively at his good
fortune. By and by, he forgot the place where he had put it, and,
thinking he must have been dreaming, he set off towards home, humming
over the affair on his way.
"Meanwhile, a man who had overheard his words, acted upon them, and
went and got the deer. The latter, when he reached his house, told his
wife, saying, 'A woodman dreamt he had got a deer, but he did not know
where it was. Now I have got the deer; so his dream was a reality.'
'It is you,' replied his wife, 'who have been dreaming you saw a
woodman. Did he get the deer? and is there really such a person? It is
you who have got the deer: how, then, can his dream be a reality?' 'It
is true,' assented the husband, 'that I have got the deer. It is
therefore of little importance whether the woodman dreamt the deer or
I dreamt the woodman.'
"Now when the woodman reached his home, he became much annoyed at the
loss of the deer; and in the night he actually dreamt where the deer
then was, and who had got it. So next morning he proceeded to the
place indicated in his dream,--and there it was. He then took legal
steps to recover possession; and when the case came on, the magistrate
delivered the following judgment:--'The plaintiff began with a real
deer and an alleged dream. He now comes forward with a real dream and
an alleged deer. The defendant really got the deer which plaintiff
said he dreamt, and is now trying to keep it; while, according to his
wife, both the woodman and the deer are but the figments of a dream,
so that no one got the deer at all. However, here is a deer, which you
had better divide between you.'"
HAN FEI TZU, who died B.C. 233, has left us fifty-five essays of
considerable value, partly for the light they throw upon the
connection between the genuine sayings of Lao Tzu and the /Tao-Tê-
Ching/, and partly for the quaint illustrations he gives of the
meaning of the sayings themselves. He was deeply read in law, and
obtained favour in the eyes of the First Emperor (see Book II., ch.
i.); but misrepresentations of rivals brought about his downfall, and
he committed suicide in prison. We cannot imagine that he had before
him the /Tao-Tê-Ching/. He deals with many of its best sayings, which
may well have come originally from an original teacher, such as Lao
Tzu is supposed to have been, but quite at random and not as if he
took them from an orderly work. And what is more, portions of his own
commentary have actually slipped into the /Tao-Tê-Ching/ as text,
showing how this book was pieced together from various sources. Again,
he quotes sentences not to be found in the /Tao-Tê-Ching/. He
illustrates such a simple saying as "To see small beginnings is
clearness of sight," by drawing attention to a man who foresaw, when
the tyrant Chou Hsin (who died B.C. 1122) took to ivory chopsticks,
that the tide of luxury had set in, to bring licentiousness and
cruelty in its train, and to end in downfall and death.
Lao Tzu said, "Leave all things to take their natural course." To this
Han Fei Tzu adds, "A man spent three years in carving a leaf out of
ivory, of such elegant and detailed workmanship that it would lie
undetected among a heap of real leaves. But Lieh Tzu said, 'If God
Almighty were to spend three years over every leaf, the trees would be
badly off for foliage.'"
Lao Tzu said, "The wise man takes time by the forelock." Han Fei Tzu
adds, "One day the Court physician said to Duke Huan, 'Your Grace is
suffering from an affection of the muscular system. Take care, or it
may become serious.' 'Oh, no,' replied the Duke, 'I have nothing the
matter with me;' and when the physician was gone, he observed to his
courtiers, 'Doctors dearly love to treat patients who are not ill, and
then make capital out of the cure.' Ten days afterwards, the Court
physician again remarked, 'Your Grace has an affection of the flesh.
Take care, or it may become serious.' The Duke took no notice of this,
but after ten days more the physician once more observed, 'Your Grace
has an affection of the viscera. Take care, or it may become serious.'
Again the Duke paid no heed; and ten days later, when the physician
came, he simply looked at his royal patient, and departed without
saying anything. The Duke sent some one to inquire what was the
matter, and to him the physician said, 'As long as the disease was in
the muscles, it might have been met by fomentations and hot
applications; when it was in the flesh, acupuncture might have been
employed; and as long as it was in the viscera, cauterisation might
have been tried; but now it is in the bones and marrow, and naught
will avail.' Five days later, the Duke felt pains all over his body,
and sent to summon his physician; but the physician had fled, and the
Duke died. So it is that the skilful doctor attacks disease while it
is still in the muscles and easy to deal with."
To clear off finally this school of early Taoist writers, it will be
necessary to admit here one whose life properly belongs to the next
period. Liu An, a grandson of the founder of the Han dynasty, became
Prince of Huai-nan, and it is as HUAI-NAN TZU, the Philosopher of that
ilk, that he is known to the Chinese people. He wrote an esoteric work
in twenty-one chapters, which we are supposed still to possess,
besides many exoteric works, such as a treatise on alchemy, none of
which are extant. It is fairly certain, however, that alchemy was not
known to the Chinese until between two and three centuries later, when
it was introduced from the West. As to the book which passes under his
name, it is difficult to assign to it any exact date. Like the work of
Lieh Tzu, it is interesting enough in itself; and what is more
important, it marks the transition of the pure and simple Way of Lao
Tzu, etherealized by Chuang Tzu, to the grosser beliefs of later ages
in magicians and the elixir of life. Lao Tzu urged his fellow-mortals
to guard their vitality by entering into harmony with their
environment. Chuang Tzu added a motive, "to pass into the realm of the
Infinite and make one's final rest therein." From which it is but a
small step to immortality and the elixir of life.
Huai-nan Tzu begins with a lengthy disquisition "On the Nature of
Tao," in which, as elsewhere, he deals with the sayings of Lao Tzu
after the fashion of Han Fei Tzu. Thus Lao Tzu said, "If you do not
quarrel, no one on earth will be able to quarrel with you." To this
Huai-nan Tzu adds, that when a certain ruler was besieging an enemy's
town, a large part of the wall fell down; whereupon the former gave
orders to beat a retreat at once. "For," said he in reply to the
remonstrances of his officers, "a gentleman never hits a man who is
down. Let them rebuild their wall, and then we will renew the attack."
This noble behaviour so delighted the enemy that they tendered
allegiance on the spot.
Lao Tzu said, "Do not value the man, value his abilities." Whereupon
Huai-nan Tzu tells a story of a general of the Ch`u State who was fond
of surrounding himself with men of ability, and once even went so far
as to engage a man who represented himself as a master-thief. His
retainers were aghast; but shortly afterwards their State was attacked
by the Ch`i State, and then, when fortune was adverse and all was on
the point of being lost, the master-thief begged to be allowed to try
his skill. He went by night into the enemy's camp, and stole their
general's bed-curtain. This was returned next morning with a message
that it had been found by one of the soldiers who was gathering fuel.
The same night our master-thief stole the general's pillow, which was
restored with a similar message; and the following night he stole the
long pin used to secure the hair. "Good heavens!" cried the general at
a council of war, "they will have my head next." Upon which the army
of the Ch`i State was withdrawn.
Among passages of general interest the following may be quoted:--
"Once when the Duke of Lu-yang was at war with the Han State, and
sunset drew near while a battle was still fiercely raging, the Duke
held up his spear, and shook it at the sun, which forthwith went back
three zodiacal signs."
The end of this philosopher is a tragic one. He seems to have mixed
himself up in some treasonable enterprise, and was driven to commit
suicide. Tradition, however, says that he positively discovered the
elixir of immortality, and that after drinking of it he rose up to
heaven in broad daylight. Also that, in his excitement, he dropped the
vessel which had contained this elixir into his courtyard, and that
his dogs and poultry sipped up the dregs, and immediately sailed up to
heaven after him!
BOOK THE SECOND
THE HAN DYNASTY (B.C. 200-A.D. 200)
CHAPTER I
THE "FIRST EMPEROR"--THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS--
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS
Never has the literature of any country been more closely bound up
with the national history than was that of China at the beginning of
the period upon which we are now about to enter.
The feudal spirit had long since declined, and the bond between
suzerain and vassal had grown weaker and weaker until at length it had
ceased to exist. Then came the opportunity and the man. The ruler of
the powerful State of Ch`in, after gradually vanquishing and absorbing
such of the other rival States as had not already been swallowed up by
his own State, found himself in B.C. 221 the master of the whole of
China, and forthwith proclaimed himself its Emperor. The Chou dynasty,
with its eight hundred years of sway, was a thing of the past, and the
whole fabric of feudalism melted easily away.
This catastrophe was by no means unexpected. Some forty years
previously a politician, named Su Tai, was one day advising the King
of Chao to put an end to his ceaseless hostilities with the Yen State.
"This morning," said he, "when crossing the river, I saw a mussel open
its shell to sun itself. Immediately an oyster-catcher thrust in his
bill to eat the mussel, but the latter promptly closed its shell and
held the bird fast. 'If it doesn't rain to-day or to-morrow,' cried
the oyster-catcher, 'there will be a dead mussel.' 'And if you don't
get out of this by to-day or to-morrow,' retorted the mussel, 'there
will be a dead oyster-catcher.' Meanwhile up came a fisherman and
carried off both of them. I fear lest the Ch`in State should be our
fisherman."
The new Emperor was in many senses a great man, and civilisation made
considerable advances during his short reign. But a single decree has
branded his name with infamy, to last so long as the Chinese remain a
lettered people. In B.C. 213, a trusted Minister, named Li Ssu, is
said to have suggested an extraordinary plan, by which the claims of
antiquity were to be for ever blotted out and history was to begin
again with the ruling monarch, thenceforward to be famous as the First
Emperor. All existing literature was to be destroyed, with the
exception only of works relating to agriculture, medicine, and
divination; and a penalty of branding and four years' work on the
Great Wall, then in process of building, was enacted against all who
refused to surrender their books for destruction. This plan was
carried out with considerable vigour. Many valuable works perished;
and the Confucian Canon would have been irretrievably lost but for the
devotion of scholars, who at considerable risk concealed the tablets
by which they set such store, and thus made possible the discoveries
of the following century and the restoration of the sacred text. So
many, indeed, of the literati are said to have been put to death for
disobedience that melons actually grew in winter on the spot beneath
which their bodies were buried.
LI SSU was a scholar himself, and the reputed inventor of the script
known as the Lesser Seal, which was in vogue for several centuries.
The following is from a memorial of his against the proscription of
nobles and others from rival States:--
"As broad acres yield large crops, so for a nation to be great there
should be a great population; and for soldiers to be daring their
generals should be brave. Not a single clod was added to T`ai-shan in
vain: hence the huge mountain we now behold. The merest streamlet is
received into the bosom of Ocean: hence the Ocean's unfathomable
expanse. And wise and virtuous is the ruler who scorns not the masses
below. For him, no boundaries of realm, no distinctions of nationality
exist. The four seasons enrich him; the Gods bless him; and, like our
rulers of old, no man's hand is against him."
The First Emperor died in B.C. 210,[1] and his feeble son, the Second
Emperor, was put to death in 207, thus bringing their line to an end.
The vacant throne was won by a quondam beadle, who established the
glorious house of Han, in memory of which Chinese of the present day,
chiefly in the north, are still proud to call themselves Sons of Han.
[1] An account of the mausoleum built to receive his remains will be
found in Chapter iii. of this Book.
So soon as the empire settled down to comparative peace, a mighty
effort was made to undo at least some of the mischief sustained by the
national literature. An extra impetus was given to this movement by
the fact that under the First Emperor, if we can believe tradition,
the materials of writing had undergone a radical change. A general,
named Mêng T`ien, added to the triumphs of the sword the invention of
the camel's-hair brush, which the Chinese use as a pen. The clumsy
bamboo tablet and stylus were discarded, and strips of cloth or silk
came into general use, and were so employed until the first century
A.D., when paper was invented by Ts`ai Lun. Some say that brickdust
and water did duty at first for ink. However that may be, the form of
the written character underwent a corresponding change to suit the
materials employed.
Meanwhile, books were brought out of their hiding-places, and scholars
like K`UNG AN-KUO, a descendant of Confucius in the twelfth degree,
set to work to restore the lost classics. He deciphered the text of
the Book of History, which had been discovered when pulling down the
old house where Confucius once lived, and transcribed large portions
of it from the ancient into the later script. He also wrote a
commentary on the Analects and another on the Filial Piety Classic.
CH`AO TS`O (perished B.C. 155), popularly known as Wisdom-Bag, was a
statesman rather than an author. Still, many of his memorials to the
throne were considered masterpieces, and have been preserved
accordingly. He wrote on the military operations against the Huns,
pleading for the employment of frontier tribes, "barbarians, who in
point of food and skill are closely allied to the Huns." "But arms,"
he says, "are a curse, and war is a dread thing. For in the twinkling
of an eye the mighty may be humbled, and the strong may be brought
low." In an essay "On the Value of Agriculture" he writes thus:--
"Crime begins in poverty; poverty in insufficiency of food;
insufficiency of food in neglect of agriculture. Without agriculture,
man has no tie to bind him to the soil. Without such tie he readily
leaves his birthplace and his home. He is like unto the birds of the
air or the beasts of the field. Neither battlemented cities, nor deep
moats, nor harsh laws, nor cruel punishments, can subdue this roving
spirit that is strong within him.
"He who is cold examines not the quantity of cloth; he who is hungry
tarries not for choice meats. When cold and hunger come upon men,
honesty and shame depart. As man is constituted, he must eat twice
daily, or hunger; he must wear clothes, or be cold. And if the stomach
cannot get food and the body clothes, the love of the fondest mother
cannot keep her children at her side. How then should a sovereign keep
his subjects gathered around him?
"The wise ruler knows this. Therefore he concentrates the energies of
his people upon agriculture. He levies light taxes. He extends the
system of grain storage, to provide for his subjects at times when
their resources fail."
The name of LI LING (second and first centuries B.C.) is a familiar
one to every Chinese schoolboy. He was a military official who was
sent in command of 800 horse to reconnoitre the territory of the Huns;
and returning successful from this expedition, he was promoted to a
high command and was again employed against these troublesome
neighbours. With a force of only 5000 infantry he penetrated into the
Hun territory as far as Mount Ling-chi (?), where he was surrounded by
an army of 30,000 of the Khan's soldiers; and when his troops had
exhausted all their arrows, he was forced to surrender. At this the
Emperor was furious; and later on, when he heard that Li Ling was
training the Khan's soldiers in the art of war as then practised by
the Chinese, he caused his mother, wife, and children to be put to
death. Li Ling remained some twenty years, until his death, with the
Huns, and was highly honoured by the Khan, who gave him his daughter
to wife.
With the renegade Li Ling is associated his patriot contemporary, SU
WU, who also met with strange adventures among the Huns. Several
Chinese envoys had been imprisoned by the latter, and not allowed to
return; and by way of reprisal, Hun envoys had been imprisoned in
China. But a new Khan had recently sent back all the imprisoned
envoys, and in A.D. 100 Su Wu was despatched upon a mission of peace
to return the Hun envoys who had been detained by the Chinese. Whilst
at the Court of the Khan his fellow-envoys revolted, and on the
strength of this an attempt was made to persuade him to throw off his
allegiance and enter the service of the Huns; upon which he tried to
commit suicide, and wounded himself so severely that he lay
unconscious for some hours. He subsequently slew a Chinese renegade by
his own hand; and when it was found that he was not to be forced into
submission, he was thrown into a dungeon and kept without food for
several days. He kept himself alive by sucking snow and gnawing a felt
rug; and at length the Huns, thinking that he was a supernatural
being, sent him away north and set him to tend sheep. Then Li Ling was
ordered to try once more by brilliant offers to shake his unswerving
loyalty, but all was in vain. In the year 86, peace was made with the
Huns, and the Emperor asked for the return of Su Wu. To this the Huns
replied that he was dead; but a former assistant to Su Wu bade the new
envoy tell the Khan that the Emperor had shot a goose with a letter
tied to its leg, from which he had learnt the whereabouts of his
missing envoy. This story so astonished the Khan that Su Wu was
released, and in B.C. 81 returned to China after a captivity of
nineteen years. He had gone away in the prime of life; he returned a
white-haired and broken-down old man.
Li Ling and Su Wu are said to have exchanged poems at parting, and
these are to be found published in collections under their respective
names. Some doubt has been cast upon the genuineness of one of those
attributed to Li Ling. It was pointed out by Hung Mai, a brilliant
critic of the twelfth century, that a certain word was used in the
poem, which, being part of the personal name of a recent Emperor,
would at that date have been taboo. No such stigma attaches to the
verses by Su Wu, who further gave to his wife a parting poem, which
has been preserved, promising her that if he lived he would not fail
to return, and if he died he would never forget her. But most famous
of all, and still a common model for students, is a letter written by
Li Ling to Su Wu, after the latter's return to China, in reply to an
affectionate appeal to him to return also. Its genuineness has been
questioned by Su Shih of the Sung dynasty, but not by the greatest of
modern critics, Lin Hsi-chung, who declares that its pathos is enough
to make even the gods weep, and that it cannot possibly have come from
any other hand save that of Li Ling. With this verdict the foreign
student may well rest content. Here is the letter:--
"O Tzu-ch`ing, O my friend, happy in the enjoyment of a glorious
reputation, happy in the prospect of an imperishable name,--there is
no misery like exile in a far-off foreign land, the heart brimful of
longing thoughts of home! I have thy kindly letter, bidding me of good
cheer, kinder than a brother's words; for which my soul thanks thee.
"Ever since t