This branch includes the people of the Chinese empire and Farther India. They are separable into three groups:—
1. The Chinese proper;
2. The Thibetans; and
3. The Indo-Chinese of Siam, Anam, Burmah, and Cochin China.
The languages of all these have peculiar features and such affinities that they all point to one ancestral stock.
1. The Chinese.
The population of China as we know it at present is the result of a fusion of a number of tribes of connected lineage. Those who claim the purest blood relate that somewhere about five thousand years ago their ancestors came from the vicinity of the Kuen-lun mountains, east of the Plateau of Pamir, and following the head waters of the Hoang-ho and Yang-tse-Kiang entered the northwestern province of China, Shen-si. Here they found a savage people, the Lolo and the Miaotse, whom they subjected or drove out, and pursuing the river valleys, reached the fertile lowlands along the coast. Their authentic annals begin about 2350 B. C. Even then they had attained a respectable stage of civilization, being a stable population, devoted to agriculture, acquainted with bronze, possessing domestic animals, and constructors of cities. The hoariest traditions speak of the cultivation of the “six field fruits,” which were three kinds of millet, barley, rice, and beans. The sorghum, wheat, and oats now common in parts of China are of comparatively recent introduction.
It is interesting to inquire whether these ancient arts possessed by the Chinese were self-developed, or were borrowed in part from the Eurafrican peoples of Iran or Mesopotamia. The former opinion is that defended by Peschel and some other ethnographers. They claim that the culture of the Chinese was developed independently in the secluded and fertile valleys of their great rivers, and owed nothing to the evolution of other civilizations until commerce and travel brought them together within historic times. The individual character of Chinese ancient culture speaks strongly for this view; certainly the Chinese system of writing is one based entirely on their range and method of thought; their domestic animals are of varieties formerly unknown in western Asia; and the growth of many undoubted local industries, silk for instance, for which they were celebrated in the days of the prophet Ezekiel, prove an ancient capacity for self-development not inferior to the Eurafrican race.
On the other hand, their astronomical system, which was in use 2300 B. C., is practically identical with that of the Arabs and Indo-Aryans, and points for its origin to the Chaldees of Babylonia. In later days, that is, since the beginning of our era, undoubtedly much that has been looked upon as the outcrop of Chinese culture is due to the Indo-Aryans. My own conclusion is that in all important elements the ancient Chinese civilization was a home product, a spontaneous growth of an intellectually gifted people, but one whose capacity of development was limited, and that later generations were satisfied to borrow and appropriate from the nations with whom commerce brought them into contact.
This insufficiency of development is the weak point of Chinese character, and is strikingly illustrated by the little use they made of important discoveries. They were acquainted as early as 121 A. D. with the power of the magnet to point to the north; but the needle was never used in navigation, but only as a toy. They manufactured powder long before the Europeans, but only to put it in fire-crackers. They invented printing with movable type in the eleventh century, but never adopted it in their printing offices. They have domesticated cattle for thousands of years, but do not milk the cows nor make butter. Paper money has been in circulation for centuries, but the scales and weight still decide the value of gold and silver, coins of these precious metals being unknown. Their technical skill in the arts is astonishing, but the inspiration of the beautiful is wholly absent.